However, India’s share in this global tally is just about one per cent, or about $10 billion. This is less than half of about 2.5 per cent share in the comparable period of 2007. While value of year-to-date global deals has declined by 27 per cent from comparable period of 2007, that for deals involving India Inc dropped by 71.5 per cent.

Total tally

According to data compiled by Dealogic, global M&A volumes announced so far in 2008 has just crossed $1,000 billion against $1.4 trillion in the corresponding period last year. However, the number of announced deals at 11,286 this year is the record high year-to-date figure, Dealogic said.

The number of deals involving Indian companies this year stood at 125 at the end of March, with a total value of $9.64 billion, according to Grant Thornton. This compares with 148 deals with a total value of $33.85 billion in first three months of 2007.

India’s 2008 tally includes a significant contribution from Tata Motors’ $2.3 billion acquisition of luxury car brands Jaguar and Land Rover from the US auto major Ford.

Crisis dampener

According to experts, the crisis in financial markets is acting as a dampener for M&A deals. Although, valuations of companies have gone down, the banks are cutting down their exposure to funding the deals.

In the year-ago period, value of India deals included large proportion from $2 multi-billion high-profile deals — Tatas’ acquisition of Corus and Vodafone’s buyout of majority stake in Hutch-Essar.

In entire 2007, total number of M&A deals involving Indian companies stood at 676 with a total announced value of $51.11 billion.