Founded in Paris in 1920, Gide is a leading international law firm with 12 offices spread throughout the world.
Gide is physically present in six regions of the world, with 11 offices, enabling it to act on cases globally.
This special edition focuses specifically on the mergers and acquisitions market in Hungary, Poland, Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine, all countries in which Gide has established a long-standing presence. It provides our analysis of the mergers and acquisitions market in the CEE countries, giving an overview of the macroeconomic situation, the most buoyant sectors, the main operations conducted in 2014, as well as our outlook for 2015.
Analysts agree when they say that the volume and aggregate value of merger and acquisition operations in the CEE region in 2014 have dropped significantly in relation to 2013 - an unfortunate and logical side-effect of the situation in Russia and Ukraine.
A number of trends are present nonetheless. Firstly, the most buoyant sectors remain energy, banking and finance, industry and TMT. Secondly, while major privatisation operations are underway in Turkey and planned in Ukraine, in Hungary the State is significantly increasing its stake in a number of strategic sectors and, in Poland, the era of major privatisations is coming to an end. Lastly, it is clear that, in most of the countries studied, the main operations in terms of volume and value were conducted by “local” companies.
In 2015, the global political climate, the solving of the conflict in Ukraine and the improvement of the Eurozone’s economic situation will weigh heavily on the mergers and acquisitions market in a certain number of CEE countries. As things stand, investors are being both prudent and patient. Nonetheless, the first figures published by the European Union on its economy are timidly optimistic.
