Strong levels of M&A activity have been supported by the continued resilience of the UK recruitment sector as a whole, with the latest REC (Recruitment & Employment Confederation) report showing an 11% increase in YoY turnover to £35.7bn in 2018.
Large corporates are looking to integrate low-code platforms with existing offerings to improve their service portfolio. The main challenge for low-code vendors is to add new technologies, such as machine learning, to keep up with the rapid development of business applications.
Merger and acquisition deal activity reached a post-recession high in 2016 and is on pace to exceed that total in 2018. The majority of deals occurred in the US, France, and the UK, with other developed European markets seeing significant deal activity in the space.
The consolidation of large international agri input players has already begun and this trend will continue in other segments as well.
Significant recent transactions involving Marston Holdings, Cabot Credit, Westcot Credit and NSL suggest the market is entering into a new consolidation phase.
M&A activity in the food and beverage sector has a productive outlook in H1 with 55 deals completed involving UK or Irish targets, with the largest number of strategic deals completed since the EU referendum.
Movement from cloud adoption to digital transformation continues to reshape the market as businesses look to maximise returns on their IT infrastructure investments.
In 2018, fashion retail in Asia-Pacific emerging markets is expected to grow at 7.0% in contrast to the 2.5% forecasted in Mature Europe economies, while the global industry is expected to grow 4.0%.
