With six deals here, valued at a total of $8.6 billion, the M&A advisor has surpassed its global rivals, Citi and Morgan Stanley, in a year where the total deal value dropped to $68.9 bn from $165 bn a year before.
With India’s gross domestic product growth coming down to 4.5 per cent and US GDP growth improving to 3.6 per cent, the investment in India has suffered.
Revival in the US economy has diluted the interest of US-based companies in Indian assets.
“Valuations people will pay for assets in India have come down,” says Raj Balakrishnan, managing director and head of investment banking at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
“While that does not apply in every sector, as growth rates vary, sector to sector and asset to asset, people are taking only rational calls,” he says.
This has brought down the number of total deals so far this year to 58, from 75 in 2012.
Despite this, BofAML, with its focus on large deals, bagged transactions such as UAE-based Etihad Airways buying a 24 per cent stake in Mumbai- based Jet Airways for $378 million.
However, it was not a part of the largest inbound deal of the year, where Anglo-Dutch firm Unilever raised its stake in Hindustan Unilever to 67.28 per cent from the earlier 52.48 per cent, in a transaction valued at $3.5
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