Number of Domestic Large Corporation M&A Deals This Year Decreased by 62% Compared to Last Year

CEO Score, 500 Largest Companies M&A Status Survey
Investment Amount Also Down 12%
Biggest Deal: Lotte Chemical's Acquisition of Iljin Materials

The number of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) by major domestic companies this year has decreased by more than 60% compared to last year.

According to CEO Score, a corporate data research institute, on the 20th, an investigation into the M&A status was conducted targeting 356 companies (including cases of acquiring shares of consolidated subsidiaries) that submitted quarterly reports among the top 500 companies by sales this year. The total number of M&A deals this year was 60, which is a 62% decrease from last year (158 deals). This marks a decline for the third consecutive year following 2021 (166 deals).

The M&A investment amount recorded 14.948 trillion KRW this year, down 12.1% from last year (17.04 trillion KRW).

[Provided by CEO Score]

However, the number of 'large-scale' M&A deals exceeding 1 trillion KRW increased from 3 last year to 5 this year.

The largest M&A deal completed this year was Lotte Chemical's acquisition of Iljin Materials (now Lotte Energy Materials) in March, with an acquisition size of 2.5377 trillion KRW. Following that, Hanwha Aerospace and other Hanwha affiliates invested 2 trillion KRW in acquiring Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (now Hanwha Ocean). In vitro diagnostics company SD Biosensor invested 1.8775 trillion KRW in acquiring Meridian Bioscience and 11.6 billion KRW in acquiring Miraero, totaling 1.8891 trillion KRW in M&A investments.

M&A activities by IT giant companies were also active. Naver acquired Poshmark, an online secondhand marketplace often called the American version of 'Danggeun Market,' for 1.7495 trillion KRW, and Kakao invested 1.3601 trillion KRW in acquiring SM Entertainment.

LG Chem acquired the U.S. oncology company Aveo Pharmaceuticals for 701.1 billion KRW, and LX International acquired Korea Glass Industry (now LX Glass) for 590.4 billion KRW. SK also acquired semiconductor back-end process company ISC (522.5 billion KRW), a subsidiary of SKC, as well as U.S. biotech company CBM (416 billion KRW) and U.S. carbon capture company 8 Rivers (373.7 billion KRW).

The company with the most M&A deals this year was Kakao, which invested 1.41 trillion KRW in a total of 6 M&A deals including SM Entertainment. SK followed with 5 deals (1.3926 trillion KRW), and SD Biosensor (1.8891 trillion KRW), Hanwha Life Insurance (357.2 billion KRW), and IS Dongseo (265 billion KRW) each conducted 2 deals.

By industry, the service sector led both in the number of M&A deals (18 deals) and investment amount (5.0179 trillion KRW).

Meanwhile, this survey excluded ongoing M&A deals that have not yet been completed, such as Korean Air's acquisition of Asiana Airlines, Eugene Group's acquisition of YTN, and Harim Group's acquisition of HMM.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.