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REGIONAL REVIEW
POTENTIAL BUYERS GO BARGAIN HUNTING IN THE
THAMES VALLEY
The feeble pound has brought UK technology companies into the sights
of overseas buyers with money to spend. Andrew MacLeod reports
In association with
I
n the UK, any mention of high- capital gains tax regime.
tech often comes in the same “It didn’t particularly matter if the
breath as the sector’s prime transaction involved a large
location – the Thames Valley, and it corporate. If there was an owner-
is here that the combination of a low manager in there anywhere, the
pound and realistic valuations is pressure was on to complete ahead of
proving attractive to some cash-rich the deadline,” says Tranter.
firms from the US and Europe. Since then, despite a reasonably
Milton Keynes
“It’s going to be a slow, uphill struggle. In the M&A
BUCKINGHAMPSHIRE
business, confidence is an important ingredient,
OXFORDSHIRE
and no-one knows when it will return” David Fawcus
Aylesbury
Oxford
For these, and a number of fruitful summer, activity has slowed.
mid-to-large UK corporates, “There are still deals being done,
opportunities now exist for bargain but at a lower level, and those there
hunting, according to Philip are tend to be smaller, or completed
Tranter, a Reading-based mergers by larger corporates that don’t
Newbury
and acquisitions lawyer with depend on external funding,” he says,
Slough
Boyes Turner. predicting that the situation will
Reading
He sees an immediate future that is remain much the same until the
simultaneously tough and ripe with banking crisis blows over.
BERKSHIRE
possibilities for acquisitive firms with
cash in hand, or ready access to it. INTERNATIONAL SCOPE
Last year was patchy, he says, with Cross-border work is also holding up,
frantic activity in the first quarter as foreign firms eye the options
driven by well-trailed changes to the presented by the recession and
48 Mergers & Acquisitions
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