Overview of the Scottish Deals Market in 2019

2019 has been an interesting time for deal-making with economic, political, and regulatory uncertainty showing no signs of relinquishing which have, unsurprisingly, seen some buyers think twice before acquiring.

However, despite this, there are positive signs in key markets that deals are still happening at attractive prices as active acquirers eye key strategic targets to support their growth aspirations. This is particularly prevalent in the SME and mid-corporate market, where the risk from macro and international factors isn’t quite as exaggerated.

There were a couple of very large upstream Oil & Gas transactions announced in 2019 with Chrysaor’s acquisition of the UK Oil & Gas assets of ConocoPhillips and Ithaca Energy’s acquisition of Chevron’s North Sea assets.
In the non-oil and gas market, recent transactions over the past 9 months have demonstrated that, for the right assets, foreign acquirers remain extremely keen to take advantage of potential Scottish investment opportunities. This includes the sale of Loch Lomond Distillers to Chinese Investment group Hillhouse Capital, and the acquisition of Alexander Dennis by Canada based NFI Group.

From an AAB perspective, the team has been incredibly busy, working with a number of clients from a range of sectors. For example, we assisted DC Thomson in the acquisition of PSP Media; worked with Panoramic Growth Equity in its recent investment in Vaioni Group; the sale of Inspire Catering to CH&Co; and the sale of Apollo Offshore to Global Energy Group.

In our latest video Lyn Calder and Chris Thompson of our CF team analyse the Scottish deals market in 2019 – watch it here: