Overview

Highlights from our April Valuation Barometer, covering deals and valuation multiples in UK M&A from March 2020.

COVID-19 has impacted us all in ways that were unimaginable a few weeks ago.  We are grateful to our loyal customers for their support and for their willingness to share observations on how the virus is affecting the ability to do deals and how terms are being influenced.

A clear theme amongst our network has been an understandable difficulty in pricing transactions in this environment.  In response to this we have produced the MarktoMarket Monthly Valuation Barometer, which is our collection of valuation data points from deals transacted or announced in March 2020.

Deal volumes did not decline in March 2020. This is consistent with intelligence from our network which suggested that any deals that entered March approaching completion would, in the main, proceed to completion. Based on the same soundings, and considering average deal gestation times, we would expect to see the slowdown in volumes begin in April and become more pronounced thereafter.

We combined transactions from our platform and our sources to estimate the value of UK deals in March 2020.  We calculated that deals valued at a total of £9.2 billion* were executed or announced during the month.  This included some significant transactions, including: the announcement of KKR’s proposed acquisition of Viridor for £4.2 billion; the completion of the takeover of Ei Group Plc by Stonegate Pub Company for £3.0 billion; and the completion of the acquisition of OMNOVA Solutions, Inc, by Synthomer plc for £654 million.

Access to the full list of deals in the April Valuation Barometer is reserved for members of the MarktoMarket Data Co-operative. 

For the full list of previous 2020 Barometers – visit our reports page.