Singapore ate up 60% of SEA's M&A activity in 2017

123 deals lured in a whopping $47.25b.

Singapore was the most-targeted market in Southeast Asia (SEA) for mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in 2017. About $47.25b (US$36.1b) were made across 123 deals, which took up 59.48% of the region's $116.58b (US$89.1b) total, Mergermarket revealed.

According to its trend report, other countries that trailed behind Singapore were Malaysia with 84 deals worth $18.45b (US$14.1b) and the Philippines with 34 deals worth $16.75b (US$12.8b).

Meanwhile, all of the top ten outbound deals from SEA region were done out of Singapore, considered the region’s most dominant economy.

In the transportation sector, Singapore was under the spotlight with seven deals worth $24.21b (US$18.5b), accounting for 73.5% of deal activity in the sector during 2017.

Two deals out of top three deals in the sector targeted Singapore – the Global Logistic Properties (GLP) transaction and the CWT takeover.