Overview of Austrian Mergers and Acquisitions

1. Please give a brief overview of the public M&A market in your jurisdiction. (Has it been active? What were the big deals over the past year?)

Since the Takeover Act 1999 (Takeover Act) came into force there have been 30 public offers, 13 mandatory and 17 voluntary (six of these were anticipated mandatory offers) (see Question 16).

In 2004, only four public offers were made (down from seven in 2003), of which one is mandatory (Mautner Markhof) and three are voluntary (bauMax, Topcall and VA Tech). Topcall and VA Tech are anticipated mandatory offers. The values of these offers are relatively small (between EUR4 million (about US$5.2 million) and EUR47 million (about US$61.3 million), except for the offer by Siemens for VA Tech, which exceeds EUR0.9 billion (about US$1.2 billion). When completed, this will be the second largest public offer ever in Austria.