Recently we’ve touched on current M&A activity within the internet | mobile | digital media sectors, “AP M&A Snapshot”, and some perspective on key trends driving that activity. Today we focus on which vendors are the most active acquirers. Below is a summary of activity for the top 10 most active acquirers in 2009. Not surprisingly Google and Cisco are at the top of the list, with six and five relevant transactions, respectively.
Late 2009 represented a breakout period for mobile with the most notable deal being the sale of mobile ad network firm Admob to Google for $750mm. We anticipate mobile will remain one of the key themes in the M&A market in 2010 with a broad array of buyers seeking strategic position, which has only been made more urgent by Apple’s iPad announcement last week. As we’ve mentioned, we still believe buyers market conditions continue to exist but expect a balanced market to emerge in 2010 and anticipate that virtually all of the companies below will consummate more acquisitions in 2010 than in 2009.
