The Deal's Matt Miller said to panelists at The Deal's M&A Outlook 2009 conference: "We've been talking primarily about inbound investment to the U.S. Let's reverse ourselves and look at outbound M&A. How has this been affected by the financial meltdown? Are we still seeing interest in investing in the BRIC countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China? And how about beyond the BRICs?"
Nick Rees, Linklaters LLP's co-managing partner who practices in the firm's corporate and M&A group, thinks it's too early to tell, as American companies are looking at balance sheets and adjusting right now. "On emerging markets investments, the same drivers remain, but I believe India and China will remain popular, but Russia is off the map."
Steven Baronoff, managing director and head of global M&A for Merrill Lynch & Co., looks to investments such as PepsiCo Inc. going to China or Coca-Cola Co. going to Russia. "Those types of smaller deals will go forward easier. Also, India tends to be a good inbound spot -- as is Vietnam."
Baronoff left off the conference's second panel with a general note. He said a lot of those deals are with startups and on the venture side, seed capital types of investments. -
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