Full Year 2021 Finance Industry Trends

2021 Key Highlights

The largest transaction in the Capital Markets segment in 2021 was Dye and Durham’s announced acquisition of Link Group, which provides a broad suite of technology-enabled fund administration services, for $3.62 billion.

Eight of the industry’s top ten highest value deals during the year were completed by strategic acquirers.

2021 Key Trends

Total transaction volume in 2021 saw a two percent uptick over 2020, from 500 to 512.

Total transaction value in 2021 fell by 42 percent over 2020, from $87.58 billion to $51.03 billion. This was in line with its 2018 level. Value more than tripled from $49.67 billion in 2018 to $180 billion in 2019.

The median revenue multiple shifted slightly from 3.0x in 2020 to 3.1x in 2021.

The segment with the largest rise in volume in 2021 over 2020 was Insurance, which improved 12 percent, from 75 to 84 deals. Capital Markets was close behind with a nine percent gain, from 128 to 140.

M&A Market Overview

Berkery Noyes tracked 1,575 Financial Technology and Information transactions between 2019 and 2021, of which 324 disclosed financial terms, and calculated the aggregate value to be $287.77 billion. Based on known transaction values, we project values of 1,251 undisclosed transactions to be $30.59 billion, totaling $318.36 billion worth of transactions tracked over the past three years.

Disclosed median enterprise value multiples for all segments combined in this report during the last 36 months were 3.1x revenue and 16.2x EBITDA.

Over the past three years, deals in the $10-$20 million range received a median enterprise value multiple of 1.7x revenue, compared to 2.6x revenue for those in the $20-$80 million range and 4.6x revenue for those in the $80 million and above range.