The Comparison of Volume of Realized Cross-Border Mergers and Acquisitions in the European Agri-Food Sector and Banking Sector

Research background: The agri-food, banking, and technology sectors have dominated intense M&A activity for several years. The agri-food sector, which is an important component of the primary sector, plays a fundamental role as agriculture helps sustain life by providing the food we need to survive, and it also makes an important contribution to the national and global economy. The banking sector in the EU plays a crucial role in promoting economic growth, ensuring financial stability, creating jobs, facilitating cross-border integration and fostering financial innovation. Providing essential services enables individuals, businesses and governments to manage their finances effectively and promote economic prosperity in the region. Purpose of the article: The main objective of this paper is to compare the volume of realized mergers and acquisitions in the agri-food and banking sectors. Methods: The dataset containing records of completed cross-border mergers and acquisitions in Europe is based on data from the Zephyr and Orbis databases. Since only the transactions above 1 million euros were selected for the resulting database, this analysis focuses on 12 countries in Europe, with the analyzed trend covering 18 periods (from 2004 to 2021). To test each hypothesis, the Wilcoxon matched pairs signed-rank test and the sign test, which compares differences between established sectors, were used. Findings & Value added: From the above analysis, it can be concluded that there are statistically significant differences in the volume of realized cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&A) between the agri-food sector and the banking sector in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2015. No differences were found in the other observed years. Based on the descriptive statistics, we can claim that the banking sector had a significantly higher volume of mergers and acquisitions in the mentioned years.