M&A in Australasia - 2024 Q1

(Originally published on April 1, 2024)

It has been a busy Q1 in Australasia, with seven new deals announced in the quarter. However, the biggest news was about a potential deal being cancelled:

• In early December 2023, Woodside Energy and Santos confirmed that they were in discussions about a potential merger. However, in early-February 2024l, following almost two months due diligence and negotiations, both companies announced that the merger was off. The merger would have created a US $52 billion company. No official reasons were given for the merger talks ending, but there were reports that the the two companies could not agree on a valuation.

In terms of newly announced deals, Q1 saw seven deals, with six in Australia and one in New Zealand. A transaction value was announced for five of these deals, with a total deal value (for these five deals) of almost US $1.456 billion.

Given this is Q1, the running totals for 2024 are therefore also seven deals, with a total deal value for these deals of almost US $1.456 billion. As a comparison, Q1 2023 saw 4 deals with a total value of about US $828 million.