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The Biggest Business Acquisitions & Mergers | Utility Bidder

2020 was a year unlike any other, from small to large businesses, with the coronavirus pandemic proving a huge challenge for all kinds of companies.

However, despite these trying circumstances, many companies have managed not just to survive but even managed to continue growing in the last twelve months.

There were over 6,000 mergers and acquisitions in the last year, but which were the biggest, and what kind of industries were the world’s biggest companies investing in?

Biggest Acquisitions

Top 3 Biggest Acquisitions

O2

Acquired by - Virgin Media

Price - $38.9bn

One of the most high-profile acquisitions of recent years came with the $38.9bn (£31bn) merger of O2 and Virgin Media in the UK, in a bid to create a “national champion” to take on the likes of BT and Sky. The two operations merged in a 50-50 joint venture back in early May.

IHS Markit

Acquired by - S&P Global

Price - $44bn

The year’s biggest acquisition came in the form of a merger, with US rating agency S&P Global buying the London-based market data firm IHS Markit in an all-stock deal worth around $44bn.

The two may not be that well-known out of the finance world, but it eclipsed any other deal in 2020 and created an industry heavyweight, also showing the increasing importance of big data in financial markets.

Arm Holdings

Acquired by - Nvidia

Price - $40bn

In September, Nvidia acquired the UK’s largest tech company, Arm Holdings, for around $40 billion. Like the IHS Markit and S&P Global merger, it was another example of a successful British firm being taken over by a US company, a deal that triggered concern in the UK over job losses.

Big Brand Investments Biggest Acquisitions

of 2020

Rank	Acquiree	Acquirer	Date Announced	Price (USD)	Acquisition Type	Acquiree Industries

The Most-Invested In Industries

Looking across over 6,000 acquisitions that took place in 2020, what are the industries and sectors that attracted the most attention and saw the most moves? (Note that some companies fall into more than one industry.)

Top 3 Most-Invested In Industries

Health Care

634 acquisitions

Health care is similar to tech in the sense that it’s a rapidly changing landscape, with companies trying to keep up with changing technology and increasing patient awareness while keeping prices low and meeting government legislation. Some of the biggest health acquisitions of this year included Immunomedics and Gilead Sciences, Cytiva and Danaher, and Varian Medical Systems and Siemens Healthineers.

Software

1,281 acquisitions

It’s no secret that the tech sector is one of the fastest-growing in the world and has been for some years now, so it’s perhaps not surprising to see a sector such as software being part of more acquisitions than any other, with 1,281 in 2020.

In such a quick-paced environment, when new, innovative software hits the market, it often gets snapped up by the bigger firms who have the money to perfect it and bring it to market.

Information Technology

1,010 acquisitions

Closely tied to software, information technology was in second place, with 1,010 acquisitions. They included the O2 and Virgin Media merger, the acquisition of Aon by Willis Towers Watson and that of Teladoc by Livongo.

The Most-Invested In Industries

of 2020

Rank	Acquiree	Number of Acquisitions

Rank	Acquiree	Number of Acquisitions

Type of Acquisition

Type of Acquisition	Number of Acquisitions	Number of Acquisitions (%)

Source

All information sourced from Crunchbase Pro and refers to all acquisitions listed in 2020 up to December 9th.

All merger types and industries shown are as listed on Crunchbase, and a company may have more than one industry listed.

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