2008 New Media M&A & Investment Round Up
New York-based Peachtree Media Advisors has just released its annual report summarizing mergers, acquisitions and amounts of capital raised in the online media market last year. The report is available as a PDF download (2MB). In 2008 there were were 707 merger, acquisition and capital raise transactions in the online sector of media - which was 92 more transactions than 2007. The breakdown was 348 capital raise transactions and 359 acquisitions. Despite the increase in transactions however, the actual dollar value declined from 2007.
In 2008 there was $16.9 billion in reported deal value, a decrease of 62% from the $44.4 billion in 2007. Peachtree attributes the drop to "a lower number of large scale strategic acquisitions in the online media sector." In other words, valuations took a dive.
