Freehills Launches Second Annual Public M&a Report

Media release













Freehills launches second annual Public Mergers & Acquisitions Report

24 August 2010

A resurgent M&A market and the return of Australian bidders defined a year dominated by friendly
deals, according to the second Freehills Public Mergers & Acquisitions Report released today.

Freehills corporate M&A partner Simon Reed said that the Freehills Public Mergers & Acquisitions
Report was the only such annual study undertaken by an Australian based law firm and provided
valuable insights into the M&A landscape in Australia.

Freehills' second annual report on public transactions, conducted by way of takeover or scheme
of arrangement, investigated the trends arising out of the 95 takeovers and schemes of
arrangements involving ASX listed companies announced during financial year 2010. Bidders
publicly committed to offers worth a total of approximately $78 billion, compared to just $19 billion
for the previous year.

`The last financial year saw a strong resurgence of M&A activity, comfortably outstripping
FY2009,' Reed said.

According to the Freehills Report, Australian bidders also played a major role in the big public
M&A deals exceeding $1 billion in value. This is in stark contrast to the previous year, when all the
big deals were initiated by foreign investors.

`Australian bidders clearly returned to the market last financial year and a resurgence in M&A deal
flow was led predominantly by friendly deals.

`Schemes have really come to the fore. We anticipated that we would see more friendly deals.
Now almost half of deals in the market are structured as schemes. This is a clear indication that a
degree of caution remains in the market,' Reed concluded.

Additional findings of the Freehills Public Mergers & Acquisitions Report:

Cash was the dominant deal currency in the majority of transactions, with deals involving
purely cash consideration almost doubling from the previous year to 62%.

Premiums were down overall on FY2009. Friendly transactions delivered higher initial
premiums than hostile approaches, reflecting the preparedness of bidders to pay more
for deal certainty.

Mining and energy are still dominating domestic M&A activity, accounting for over 50%
of deals.

There were more unconditional deals in FY2010. While the nature of conditions did not
change dramatically, several bidders used the `bear hug' approach of imposing
conditions which required target co-operation.

Deal protection continues to be an important element of transactions: deals involving lock-up
arrangements with key shareholders had very high success rates.

ENDS.

For more information contact:


Kate Piper Andrew McKenzie
Media Consultant Media & Communications Manager
+61 2 9225 5167 +61 2 9322 4833
[email protected] [email protected]







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