China Buys Foreign Firms at Record Pace
By wchung | 07 Mar, 2025

A hunger for leading international consumer brands and industrial technology drove China’s outbound mergers and acquisitions (M&As) to record high levels in the first six months of 2011, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) said Monday.

Chinese firms concluded 107 outbound M&As with a total value $9.6 billion, up 14 percent year-on-year. Asia and Europe were the top investment destinations. In the industrial and consumer sectors outbound M&As nearly doubled in the first half of 2011 compared with the same period last year.

“Outbound M&A is expected to remain robust for the remainder of the year although global turbulence could affect some existing deals in the pipeline,” said Ken Su, a Transaction Services Partner at PwC China. “Such a downturn, however, could present buying opportunities for cashed-up Chinese investors.”

Global market volatility and an uncertain economic outlook isn’t dampening China’s hunger for M&A deals that will secure the technology and consumer brands needed to feed China’s booming consumer and export demands, especially now that both are feeling the pressure to move up the value chain.

“While the resource sectors will still be the focus, it is clear that other industry sectors are becoming relatively more active,” Su said. “This overall trend combined with the expansion and diversification of Chinese outbound buyers should lead to further growth in outbound investment in the future.”

Asia was the top destination for outbound M&A with 33 deals in the first half of this year, but Europe was close behind with 30 announced transactions in the first half, more than the region’s total for all of 2010. The top target sectors in Europe were resources, industrials and retail. Globally China’s firms are still focused on resources, followed by manufacturing, energy and technology. But the traditional focus on resources has become an increasingly smaller portion of China’s outbound M&A activity as interest grows in other sectors.

China’s domestic M&As also grew 10 percent to a record 1,616 deals in the first half of the year. Inbound M&As has remained at last year’s levels so far but is expected to drop if the debt crises in the U.S. and the EU continue.