Last Thursday, Robin Wauters, the founding Editor of Tech.eu, published a report zooming in on all the mergers, acquisitions and IPOs in the European tech industry that happened in 2014. The European Tech Exits report is the result of 18 months of monitoring M&A activity across the board, and weeks of number crunching, analysis and writing. Below you’ll find 10 key takeaways from this outstanding research:
- In 2014, Tech.eu tracked a total of 358 exits (mergers, and acquisitions of European tech companies)
- Only 4.75% of European tech company exits in 2014 were initial public offerings (IPOs)
- The 125 deals that were disclosed amounted to a total of €80.14 billion (almost $90 billion at current conversion rate). In more than 65% of the deals, the size of the transaction could be not determined
- The most popular vertical for exits was ‘Enterprise SaaS’, followed by ‘Adtech’, ‘Gaming’, ‘Security’ and ‘E-Commerce’
- B2B rules in Europe: only about 40% of exited companies operate a B2C model
- A lot of the major deals were a result of consolidation in the telco/ISP space (SFR, Ziggo, ONO etc.) but a number of digital IPOs also stood out (namely King, Markit, Rocket Internet, Zalando, Just Eat and Zoopla)
- Just over one-third of all European tech companies with an exit in 2014 were funded by venture capital firms
- Germany saw the most ‘domestic’ company exits in Europe, but the UK had significantly more major ‘home runs’
- Google acquired the most European tech companies in 2014 (8), followed by Microsoft, Yandex and Facebook
- Approximately 37% of all acquisitions of European tech firms were made by a US-based company (122 vs. 40 for #2 on the list, Germany)
The full research report, which is the first paid report of Tech.eu since launching in 2013, obviously provides a ton more information, detailed breakdowns, per-country analysis, a look at investor involvement, outlook on future trends (etc.). It can be purchased here for £1,200.00.
This price point, which we think is fair (unique data plus huge amount of work that probably went into this), leads us to the final takeaway, which is on our own research report; we have reflected and now think that our report on Startup Accelerators in Europe (published in 2014) was priced way too cheap. Reports like this are kind of the opposite of a volume play. Our updated and enhanced Startup Accelerator report will be priced at €49 (instead of €19,90) and published next month. Stay tuned!
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