Region's mergers and aquisitions double in value

Private equity deals for commercial laundry equipment supplier JLA and vehicle parts distributor Andrew Page were among 77 transactions.

Mergers and acquisitons were collectively worth 531.97m, a 100.45 per cent increase on the previous quarter, while the number of transactions was up 28.33 per cent, according to Experian.

Deals in Yorkshire made up 8.3 per cent of the number of those carried out nationwide although the total carried out in Britain fell from 1,131 deals to 926.

Wendy Smith, business development manager at Experian Corpfin, said: "The fact that the Yorkshire region has bucked the national trend, with a significant increase in the volume of deals at the start of 2010, shows that funding for good-quality risk- free businesses is available.

"However, the overall figures for the UK tell us that the market is still very fragile. Although in some cases funding has been available where good-quality businesses have been involved, there is a still a funding gap and this is proving to be the main obstacle to getting the deals off the ground."

In Yorkshire, private equity firm Phoenix took a majority stake in Andrew Page in a transaction valuing the family-owned business at around 100m.

HG Capital took majority stake in JLA in a deal is believed to value the family-owned firm at around 150m.

DLA Piper was the most active legal advisor in the region, working on five transactions. PricewaterhouseCoopers and Grant Thornton each worked on three transactions, the joint highest number. Meanwhile a separate survey from accountants Grant Thornton, which measured M & A activity in a different way, said there were 524 mergers and acquisitions worth about 13.6bn in Britain in the first quarter of 2010, a 14 per cent fall in the number of deals and a 22 per cent drop in value compared to the last quarter of last year

Ian Marwood, head of corporate finance at Grant Thornton in Yorkshire, said: "The drop in the total M&A value is partly due to there being fewer mega-deals than last year. At the same time, there is a rebound in activity in mid-market M&A. Grant Thornton has not worked on so many M&A deals since the second quarter of 2008."

There was also a drop in the number of buyouts with 42 private equity deals worth nearly 2.4bn, compared to 53 transactions worth more than 2.9bn in the final quarter of 2009.