Management buy-outs at Cantrell & Cochrane and the Clondalkin group were the biggest such deals completed in Europe last year, according to research by accountant Deloitte & Touche.
Cantrell&Cochrane's £578 million (€728.8 million) buyout from Allied Domecq was the biggest management buy-out in the Republic.
It was followed by the £374 million spent by Clondalkin management and its backers when the public company was taken private.
Deloitte & Touche also reports remarkable growth in value in the European market in 1999, with the total value of deals up 59 per cent on 1998 to €31.4 billion. But while the total value of MBOs was almost six times greater than in 1998, the number of these deals was much fewer. Deloitte & Touche says the number of deals in the Republic fell to eight last year compared with 14 in 1998. The firm expects the number of MBOs to increase in the future as more companies delist from the stock exchange and move into private ownership.
In the Republic, there were six deals valued at less than €50 million. The most notable increase was at the top end of the market where the number of Irish deals with a transaction value of more than €250 million was up by 200 per cent.
