The fintech space is booming with global mergers and acquisitions (M&A) reaching a record breaking $116.6 billion in 87 deals. Up 4x from “just” $31.8 billion for all of last year.
Most of this circa $117 billion is made of three US based deals. Fidelity National Information Services bought Worldpay in March for $43.3 billion. Fiserv acquired First Data in January for $39.4 billion, and Global Payments bought Total System Services in May for $26.2 billion according to a report by Dealogic.
In just three years the fintech space has exploded, going from a couple of billions to now just a bit less than bitcoin’s entire market cap.
“Clearly, technological innovation is causing intensifying consolidation in the electronic payment services market, while the acquisition of data on customer’s purchasing and behaviour trends further drives fintech acquisitions,” Dealogic associate Chisa Tanaka said.
Globally across all industries there have been $1 trillion worth of deals so far this year, compared to $3.3 trillion for all of last year.
IPOs, however, are down to just $17.3 billion in 222 deals for the first quarter across the globe, a plunge of some 65.8% from 2018 Q1.
“Trade tensions between the US and China negatively impacted the IPO market with Chinese company IPOs standing at $5.6bn via 46 IPOs, the lowest quarterly volume since 2015 Q3 ($1.9bn via 10 IPOs).
In the EMEA region the shadow of Brexit brought uncertainty leading to UK IPO issuance reaching only $152m via 3 deals,” says Dealogic.
There’s suggestions companies are buying back shares to go private with Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX accusing SEC of being the Shortsellers Enrichment Commission.
While in the blockchain space, $1.12 billion has been invested by Venture Capitalists in the first quarter of 2019, surpassing all of the booming 2017.
Meaning blockchain tech is still a small part of fintech, but if we take out the megadeals, it accounts for about 5-10%, while fintech is about 10% of all global deals.
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