Where Are All The Enterprise Tech Buyers?

Enormous tech M&A deals have been announced recently: #EMC / #Dell, #WDC / #SanDisk, #Lam-Research / #KLC-Tencor. These follow a very busy year of large tech M&A, with #Avago / #Broadcom, #Nokia / #Alcatel-Lucent and #Intel / #Altera.

This year is shaping up to be a record one for M&A activity across all industries. As PitchBook points out in a recent report: “Even if total value slumps in 4Q to $320 billion — compared to $437 billion in 3Q — total deal value in 2015 will still eclipse $1.7 trillion.”

However, with the large number of multi-billion dollar mergers, there is a nagging feeling that the traditional tech buyers are doing fewer acquisitions of smaller VC-backed startup companies, acquisitions that usually close for a few hundreds of millions of dollars.

With Dell/EMC/ #VMware busy in their own deal, the number of smaller enterprise tech acquisitions will shrink even further. CB Insights points out here that, “There have only been 45 $100M+ exits in the first three quarters of 2015, which puts it on track to be the first year with less than 70 $100M+ exits since 2010.”

http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/22/where-are-all-the-enterprise-tech-buyers/