As a result of the economic downturn, M&A activity has been slower in 2002 than in previous years. Whereas in the past few years there have been many takeover bids involving Belgium’s largest public companies, the trend seems to be that the M&A market is now focusing more on transactional combinations involving private companies and management/leveraged buy-outs. In addition, transactions more often relate only to parts of businesses, rather than to entire businesses (for example partial mergers). Due to the market downturn, delistings, corporate restructurings and large insolvency proceedings are also generating new streams of work.
In Belgium, we see that most M&A activities are cross-border transactions. Large listed Belgian companies such as UCB, Solvay, Bekaert, Tractebel, Umicore (formerly Union Miniere), and Interbrew are undertaking M&A activity almost everywhere in the world. We also see that most acquisitions of Belgian companies are made by foreign companies rather than by other Belgian companies – such as Telenet by Callahan Associates, Glaverbel by Asahi Glass. A recent trend is that such acquisitions frequently occur in the context of judicial composition or insolvency such as Sabena, Lernout & Hauspie.
