SWITZERLAND Trends and Developments Contributed by: Marco Toni and Lara Pafumi, Loyens & Loeff
Loyens & Loeff Alfred-Escher-Strasse 50 CH-8002 Zurich Switzerland Tel: +41 43 434 67 00 Email: zurich@loyensloeff.com Web: www.loyensloeff.com
Deal Activity and Market Insights In general, cross-border M&A activity in Switzer- land has seen a shift from inbound transactions to more outbound transactions since mid-2022, alongside a slight overall decline. The strong Swiss franc made foreign targets more attrac- tive for Swiss investors, while Swiss companies became more expensive for foreign investors. This also affected the Swiss TMT sector – even though M&A activity in the Swiss TMT sector remained resilient to the global trend of reduced deal activity in the first half of 2023 (reaching record deal volumes, according to PwC), it fol- lowed the overall trend in the first half of 2024, recording a sharp decline compared to the pre- vious year. As in previous years, the share of foreign inves- tors in Swiss TMT deals is higher than in other sectors, highlighting the sector’s generally more international outlook. Furthermore, M&A activ- ity in the Swiss TMT sector is driven by buyers from outside the TMT sector. This marks a sig- nificant difference to other sectors, particularly as the majority of transactions in Switzerland are completed by buyers from the same sector. This trend towards out-of-sector buyers in the TMT market can be explained by the persisting need for companies to drive innovation and advance digitalisation and is expected to continue.
Private equity and financial investors were very active in the Swiss TMT M&A market in the first half of 2024, accounting for around two-thirds of all transactions. This is significantly higher than the global average, highlighting the strong appeal of TMT for financial sponsors. With pres- sure on the sell-side to divest long-term assets, and significant funds available on the buy-side, private equity is expected to continue to drive deal activity in the coming year. In 2024, the Swiss TMT sector witnessed several notable M&A, including: • EQT’s majority stake in Acronis, a leading Swiss cybersecurity and data protection platform for managed service providers and IT departments; • Cadence Design Systems’ acquisition of BETA CAE Systems International AG, a leading system analysis platform provider of multi-domain, engineering simulation solu- tions; and • Swisscom’s majority stake in Camptocamp, one of the leading Swiss companies in the development and integration of open-source solutions. Software companies as main drivers Technology companies, especially software companies and IT service providers, are at the forefront of M&A activity in the Swiss TMT sec-
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