A cheat sheet of tech acquisitions in Southeast Asia

Queena Wadyanti compiled the data for this piece, which is an updated version of an earlier article.

Southeast Asia has seen its fair share of M&A deals over the years. Some have been blockbuster moves, such as Alibaba’s US$1 billion deal to acquire Lazada and Seek’s US$586 million purchase of JobStreet, while others flew under the radar.

Last week, news that Singapore-based TikTok rival Lomotif would be acquired for US$125 million came out of nowhere and hogged the headlines.

And then came the announcement that Stamped, another Singapore startup, is set to be bought over for up to US$110 million.

Paul Yang, CEO and founder of Lomotif / Photo credit: Lomotif

Data on the region’s M&A deals is hard to come by, so we’ve put together a compilation that you’ll hopefully find useful.

But first, some caveats

M&A transactions can be all-stock, cash, or a mix of both, so a high transaction value doesn’t necessarily mean that shareholders get good returns. Some deals are also made under irregular circumstances.

We do acknowledge that there are limitations to our dataset. If you see something that’s missing or incorrect, do reach out to us at research@techinasia.com and let us know.

With the disclaimer out of the way, let’s dive in.

Southeast Asia is certainly seeing more M&A deals since we first started tracking the region, with Singapore Press Holdings’ HardwareZone acquisition being the first deal on our list.

2019 was the peak, clocking in 60 deals including Bigo (US$1.45 billion), Wavecell (US$125 million), Coins.ph (US$72 million), and Red Dot Payment (US$65 million).

As the pandemic raged on last year, observers expected to see an exceptional number of M&As. This proved somewhat accurate, as 2020 had the most number of deals in recent memory – outside of 2019, that is.

Notable movements include the sale of TradeGecko, which is seen as a win for its shareholders as well as Singlife’s merger with Aviva Singapore.