A report on a variety of wealth-creating events, such as mergers and IPOs, shows some improvement in the first half of this year but not all the figures were on the up.

Mergers, acquisitions and initial public offerings – all important liquidity events that wealth managers need to track – produced mixed results for volume and value in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia in the first six months of this year, figures from Duff & Phelps show.

The valuation and corporate advisor’s Transaction Trail report shows that in the first half of 2016, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia recorded total deal activity of $54.2 billion, spread across 655 deals. To put those figures into context, globally, about 18,779 deals valued at over $2 trillion were registered in the same period.

Singapore remains at the helm of deal-making in the region; Singapore recorded a total of 383 deals (M&A, private equity/venture capital and IPOs) worth $43.4 billion for the first half of 2016. This compares with 685 deals worth $103.8 billion for the whole of 2015. 

M&A comprised the bulk of the deal volume in Singapore, registering 339 deals valued at $40.5 billion in H1 2016. This compares to $101.2 billion, $50.7 billion and $36.1 billion for the full years of 2015, 2014 and 2013 respectively.

The continued momentum in deal value was mainly due to sizeable M&A transactions by the sovereign wealth funds GIC and Temasek Holdings in consortium as well as stand-alone investments, complemented by other notable deals such as CMA CGM’s acquisition of Neptune Orient Lines, Qatar Investment Authority’s acquisition of Asia Square Tower 1, and Alibaba Group’s stake acquisition in Lazada South East Asia.

While Singapore M&A deal volumes grew 16 per cent in H1 2016, deal values declined by 35 per cent compared to the same period a year ago.

Meanwhile, Malaysia and Indonesia recorded 222 and 90 deals (M&A, PE/VC and IPOs) worth $9.4 billion and $2.6 billion respectively for H1 2016. This compares to 360 and 143 deals worth $9.7 billion and $2.8 billion for Malaysia and Indonesia respectively for full-year 2015.

Looking ahead, there are more than 100 deals in the pipeline in the region, the report said, with potential deal value of over $20 billion, based on information disclosed.