Over the past decades China has put itself in the limelight as being one of the most important emerging economies. Initially mainly as producer of consumer products. And after decades of rapid growth and development in manufacturing and export, the Chinese economy is inevitably undergoing a transition to a service and consumption driven economy. IMAP Netherlands has an active China approach for the past seven years. Our multilingual China desk enables clients to conduct business away from home. For our Chines clients that are looking for overseas M&A investments we offer targeting in a 1:1 approach and prevent auctions. For our Dutch clients looking for Chinese buyers we combine our involved trusted relations, avoid communication issues and offer them a China premium.
IMAP Netherlands’ China desk visited and organized several events in China last week.
We co-organised a cross-border M&A forum in Suzhou with ICBC. ICBC invited 25 local listed companies mainly active in the manufacturing, material and industrial sector. IMAP informed them about the overseas M&A process and on overseas investment projects. IMAP and ICBC Investment Banking Department from its Beijing head office signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the aim to collaborate on helping Chinese companies with cross-border M&A activities.
Later that week we attended the China M&A Forum 2017, which looked into M&A in China and its growing importance in the global M&A marketplace. Together with over 270 delegates such as senior government officials, private equity investors, corporate executives, financial advisors, and legal professionals from across the globe key drivers, opportunities, and challenges affecting M&A within and outside of China were identified. We discussed the evolvement of China M&A in 2017 and the outlook for 2018 and beyond. We learned about the key drivers, latest deal sourcing trends, and challenges.
Friday October 20, IMAP’s Balthazar den Breems and May Wu attended the Trade and Investment Seminar in Wuxi organised by Rotterdam Partners and Kneppelhout & Korthals Advocaten . The Trade and Investment seminar was part of the Rotterdam Mission to China. Their aim is to further expand cooperation in the equestrian sector as well as the retail, trade, e-commerce and logistics sector. More than ten Rotterdam Region based parties participated in the mission. The participants with different backgrounds visited several Chinese Companies in Shanghai. Although their background differs they connect with each other very well since their common ground lays in doing business in China. Next to the Consul of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and executive director of the NFIA in China the attendees consisted of governmental officials from Wuxi municipal bureau of commerce and Wuxi companies. IMAP – with her headquarter in Rotterdam – discovered lots of interesting businesses to work with in the future.
And last but certainly not least we started our China trip with a visit to our Chinese client in Shandong province. Our client is the largest shrimp farming company in China. In addition to food they are also active in salt, aqua feed, microalgae, chemical, wind energy, shipping, real estate and education sectors. We are advising them on a take-over in Northern Europe and are currently exploring the European market for them.
IMPROMAT-COMPUTER, serves large corporate clients in the Telecommunications, Utilities, Banking, Insurance, and Industrial sectors. It has over 100 employees and generates €34 million in revenues
Khell-Food is the largest producer of ready-made sandwiches and baguettes in the Hungarian market
IMAP partners are now operating in a market that is transitioning away from a phase of cheap financing, pent-up demand and high valuations to one of surging inflation, rising interest rates, more selective investor appetite, and widespread domino effects from the war in Ukraine.
