M&A set for strong growth

The market is worth USD 2.7 billion, with no lack of upcoming transactions, the daily Rzeczpospolita reports.

The paper cites a Baker & McKenzie report that US and European companies have a lot of cash reserves that will be used on M&A activity.

"Ever braver and bigger expansion abroad is a new trend noted among Polish companies,” Tomasz Krzyżowski, a partner at Baker & McKenzie in Warsaw said.

The report notes that domestic M&A this year could reach USD 1.3 billion, and foreign M&A USD 2.1 billion. IN 2018 the report suggests these numbers could be USD 2.5 billion and USD 4.7 billion, respectively.

Poland is currently in 21st place in a ranking of investment attractiveness.

A study conducted in March by Richard Hall, Chairman of Zenith International showed that 2014 was a peak year globally for M&A transactions in the food and beverage sector.

The study showed that out of the 536 transactions identified in 2014 most occurred in the subsectors of food and beverage: packaging (68), dairy (63), alcoholic beverages (48) and additives (47).

Among the transactions named by the report only one was from Poland: Maspex, a Polish producer of food and beverage products, which acquired another Polish company Agros Nova, becoming one the biggest Polish producers with an annual turnover of over PLN 1 billion (EUR 240 million). (jh)