Regional Reports

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Energy investments continue to dominate China’s overseas acquisitions, as the gap between the country’s domestic production and the resources it needs to sustain its vast manufacturing economy grows wider and wider.

BRIC – Brazil, Russia, India and China lumped together, from all corners of the world, but are they really so similar?

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A sharp upsurge in M&A is most unlikely while so many institutions are groping their way across the new landscape of Commission rules, capital requirements and funding. Henry Gibbon reports

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Despite expected cuts to public healthcare budgets, German pharmaceutical companies remain acquisitive, writes Deborah Cust.

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German restructuring has been relatively quiet in 2010, following a busy market in 2009, but can it last? Quentin Carruthers reports

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Germany’s gas and power sector should generate more than €3bn of deals over the next few months, as the country’s largest utilities continue to sell off non-core interests to bolster their balance sheets ahead of massive investment programmes over the next decade. Andrew Cavenagh reports

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Approaches for the chipmaker have led to strategic disagreement among the German technology leader’s top management. Adam Durchslag reports

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After a difficult 2009, M&A activity in Germany’s industrial sector is expected to pick up during the second half of the year, helped by interested private equity investors. Aimee Donnellan reports

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A booming economy and foreign investors eyeing up acquisition targets, Brazil is leading South America’s M&A market. But with a history of corruption and political instability, investors remain cautious about the future. Aimee Donnellan reports

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Consumer spending in China is growing at a rate of around 20% a year and as the Chinese government drives a shift in the economy from one that is export-driven to one focused on consumer spending, M&A in the consumer sector still poses some significant challenges for foreign buyers, writes Deborah Cust.

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Russian M&A is picking up but it is not back to the boom times of 2007. Nevertheless, there are some mega-deals in the making: the US$20bn-plus merger of Silvinit and Uralkali as well as Vimpelcom acquiring Italy’s number three mobile operator Wind. Adam Durchslag reports

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It has been just over a month since Tony Hayward announced his resignation as BP’s chief executive officer. Now, TNK-BP – the Russian company to which he is destined to be exiled as a non-executive director – is keen to buy US$1bn worth of Venezuelan assets that BP wants to sell.

France Telecom, which owns the Orange brand, has Morocco’s second-largest telecoms operator, Meditel, in its sights, with reports that it could end up buying a 40% stake worth €650m. A deal could even be agreed as early as this summer.

There was a strong recovery in the first half and major reforms of the Takeover Code lie ahead, but Europe lags the US and Asia in India’s M&A market, writes James Winterbotham of India Advisory Partners.

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Mobile phone operators in India are facing margin pressures from all sides: a fierce price war, financing US$14.6bn of 3G licences and rolling out next-generation networks. By merging, they could cut billions in costs in one fell swoop. But India’s regulatory framework makes that very difficult to do. Adam Durchslag reports.

It’s only been a few days now since Tony Hayward announced his resignation as BP’s chief executive officer. Now, TNK-BP – the Russian company to which he is destined to be exiled as a non-executive director – is keen to buy US$1bn worth of Venezuelan assets that BP wants to sell.

BP, Sainsbury, Northumbrian Water: there has been a sprinkling of speculation this week over possible Middle Eastern acquisitions of Western targets.

There is now a more than 50% chance that Greece will default, restructure and leave the eurozone within the next five years.

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Italian hopes for the M&A market rest on a pick-up in deal activity after the summer, but companies remain overleveraged and assets overvalued.