One for the books: Asia Pacific sees highest M&A deals in 34 years

Plus it’s a whopping US$153 billion increase from last year.

According to a report by Thomson Reuters, Hong Kong’s CITIC Pacific’s US$44.5 billion acquisition of the main assets of its state-owned parent, CITIC group, drove the surge in the value of M&A deals involving companies in the region, increasing the disclosed deals average M&A deal value from 1H13’s US$69 million to 1H14’s US$110.3 million.

Asia Pacific’s deal-making this year witnessed at least 6 deals US$5 billion and above compared to only one during 1H13, with both domestic and foreign acquirors targeting Chinese companies.

Thomson Reuters also revealed that the United States is currently the most active non-Asian acquiror of Asian companies in terms of deal value with US$14.1 billion worth of transactions from 182 deals.

Here’s more from the report:

The Financials sector made up the largest portion of the acquisitions involving Asia Pacific companies with US$80.2 billion in deal value, a 232.7% increase from the first half of 2013 and captured 21.2% of the M&A activity. This is the strongest semi-annual period for the sector involving Asia Pacific driven by the CITIC Pacific US$44-billion acquisition of CITIC Group’s main assets.Real Estate captured 15.9% of the market activity with US$60.2 billion, a 113.4% increase over a year ago, and witnessed the strongest-ever first half period. This was driven by Greenland Holdings’ plans to list on the Shanghai Stock Exchange through a reverse merger (valued at US$10.6 billion) with Shanghai Jinfeng Investments.

Deal-making activity in the TMT sector (Technology, Media, and Telecommunications) totaled US$53.2 billion, up 85.4% in deal value with a combined market share of 14.1%. This is the best first half period for TMT involving Asia Pacific since 2007 when deal value reached US$74.8 billion.