Is it true that the total number of PE and merger deals this year have been more than last year?

You are absolutely right. The total deal value for 2020 was not only robust but actually grew by 7% in 2020 over 2019. The total value of all deals in the year 2020 till date was pegged at $80 billion. This deal volume was spread across a total of 1268 transactions and this represented a much a higher per capital value of deals compared to last year.

Interestingly, but not too surprisingly, more than 35% of these deals were accounted for by global investments into two of the marquee RIL ventures; Reliance Jio and Reliance Retail. If you leave aside the big-ticket deals in the telecom sector, the first half of 2020 actually saw investors putting plans on hold to focus more on conserving cash.

Among domestic deals; the biggest deal was Reliance Retail ventures buying the complete retail, wholesale, logistics and warehousing businesses of Kishor Biyani’s Future Group for a sum of $3.3 billion. The year also included the big fund infusions by Facebook and Google into Jio Platforms. There was no FDI flow into Reliance Retail.

FDI worth $30 billion came in the first half of the year, with the rest coming in the second half. Telecom replaced technology as the leader, attracting investments worth $11.2 billion. This is the first year that telecom has got the better of technology and IT services and for that Deal Street needs to thank Reliance.