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Super-sized foreign deals boost North West in Q1

Two super-sized foreign deals have boosted the North West economy in the first quarter of 2013, and helped towards a huge increase in overseas deals in comparison with 2012.

Deloitte’s North West Cross-Border Deals Radar showed that overseas buyers acquired a total £538m worth of assets in the three months up to the end of March.

These figures were significantly boosted by two major deals; one from Deutsche Bank-owned RREEF Alternative Investment, who acquired a majority stake in One Angel Square, the Co-operative’s new Manchester headquarters, for £142m, and another from the takeover of Leyland-based Enterprise by Spanish infrastructure group Ferrovial for £385m.

Deloitte also highlighted the buyout of Pendle manufacturer Wardle Stores by US group Uniroyal Engineered Products and France-based Aures Technologies’ acquisition of Warrington technology firm, J2 Retail Systems for £6m.

Against figures from last year when the North West saw 9 inbound transactions worth £60m, the first quarter of 2013 experienced a vast rise of nearly 800%.

Outbound deals from the North West, however, came to just £60m from five deals, although this still represents a considerable increase from the same three months in 2012, when six deals worth £26m were made.

Jodi Birkett, corporate finance partner at Deloitte, commented: “It is encouraging to see cross-border deal volumes in the North West make a positive start to the year, with an increasing value of inbound and outbound transactions year-on-year.

“The presence of two £100million-plus transactions demonstrates the appetite among foreign investors for quality North West assets.

“While it is difficult to draw conclusions on the state of the market from headline deals, this does provide some optimism for the North West M&A market in 2013.

“This is backed up by Deloitte’s most recent CFO Survey, which found that perceptions of economic and financial uncertainty have fallen to their lowest level since early 2010 and optimism has risen for the third consecutive quarter.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Miranda Dobson .