The Asia-Pacific is the second top region for global deals in the internet and technology sector, a new report reveals, with US investors becoming increasingly interested in Australian companies.<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n In a report by Sydney-based venture capital fund Right Click Capital, which analysed 2,400 deals, it\u2019s revealed acquisitions and investments sealed last year were worth more than $US104 billion ($97 billion).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Deals involving software and services companies were the highest priced, the report said.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Meanwhile, the Asia-Pacific region came second only to Europe on global comparisons, with deals valued at an average $US60.4 million.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Average deal value in Europe was $US114 million, while deal size in North America averaged $US59.2 million.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But North America remains at the centre of the world when it comes to investment in technology firms, with deals in 2011 worth $US72 billion, representing 71% of the global total.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n According to James Whalley, of Right Click Capital, 2011 was particularly interesting in Australia due to the increased interest from American investors in Australian companies.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The rise of daily deals sites was also apparent. The $84 million investment in shopping website Catch of the Day, by a consortium led by James Packer, ranked as the 18th<\/sup> largest in the region.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Phaedon Stough, co-founder of Australian investment network Innovation Bay, and currently living in San Francisco, says it\u2019s a \u201creally interesting time\u201d in Silicon Valley at the moment.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201c[There are] so many funded start-ups who will all be competing for\u2026 Series A investment opportunities in about 12 months,\u201d Stough says.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cI also caught up with the guys at Accel Ventures [recently] \u2013 they invested in 99designs, Atlassian and OzForex.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In 2011, the largest deal in the Asia-Pacific region was Digital Sky Technologies\u2019 $US1.5 billion investment in Chinese eCommerce site 360buy.com.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This also represented the largest joint raising of the year, alongside a raising by Facebook last January.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The biggest technology deal was Hewlett-Packard\u2019s $US10.3 billion acquisition of enterprise software maker Autonomy, followed by Microsoft\u2019s $US8.5 billion acquisition of Skype.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Whalley believes the \u201cFacebook factor\u201d is likely to have an impact on continued high investment activity in the internet and technology sector throughout 2012.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cWe saw signs of a good upward trend towards the end of last year, which we expect to continue, particularly in the lead-up to the Facebook IPO,\u201d Whalley told The Australian Financial Review<\/i>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cIf that continues to go well, it will have a bearing on the level of activity in the market. Overall, I would be surprised if we didn\u2019t see a stronger first quarter than last year.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Asia-Pacific is the second top region for global deals in the internet and technology sector, a new report reveals,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60085,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42881"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42881\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}