By Emmanuel Oluebube, Correspondent UK

Global IT services and consulting company Accenture is the top acquirer in the global mergers and acquisitions (M&A) market for the tech, media and telecom (TMT) sector, having seen 22 deals in 2021.

Senior Analyst in Thematic Research at GlobalData, Snigdha Parida comments: This year is seeing several major IT services companies focus on M&A activity. After Accenture, Atos and IBM are next two most companies to involve in M&A activity as per GlobalData’s deals database.

“Accenture has been acquiring cloud companies this year as part of its US$3bn Accenture Cloud First initiative. It has announced a total of 22 acquisitions in 2021 so far; more than half of which are cloud services companies. These deals will provide the company with a competitive edge over other leading cloud companies providing professional services such as IBM, HCL, and Cognizant.”

On 1st June 2021, Accenture announced to acquire Novetta, an advanced analytics company to bolster its advanced artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and cloud capabilities and also announced to acquire Nell’Armonia, enterprise performance management (EPM) solutions consulting company. Industrie&Co, Linkbynet, ThinkTank, AppsPro, Core Compete, Edenhouse, Infinity Works, Businet System, Imaginea and Wolox are some of Accenture’s recent acquisitions that involve the cloud theme.

Accenture generated US$12.2bn in revenue during Q2 2021, which ended 28 February, representing an 8 per cent increase year on year. Roughly 20 per cent of its revenues came from cloud services in 2020, a figure the company hopes to be around 80 per cent by 2025.

Parida continues: “We aren’t even half way through 2021 and Accenture has made a huge number of acquisitions. It is definitely worth watching how many more they may announce by the end of the year. While cloud appears to be the company’s key M&A theme in 2021, other areas such as cybersecurity, big data analytics, industrial automation, and supply chain have been and will be attractive for Accenture to make acquisitions.”

GlobalData’s latest report, ‘M&A in TMT 2020’, evaluates deals with a transaction value of at least US$50m or more. It highlights that the global IT services sector saw around 65 deals worth US$38bn in year 2020. Cloud, big data and connectivity themes were the key drivers of most of these deals.

Parida concludes: “Other IT services providers such as Atos, IBM and Cognizant have also been on acquisition sprees over the last few months. This surge is driven by two key factors: one to bolster the acquirer’s capabilities amid the COVID-19 pandemic; and second to expand their services globally. As we saw last year, buying companies in strategic areas such as cloud, connectivity, big data and analytics will be very beneficial to these IT service providers during this pandemic.”