Did the gloomy shadow of China's second-most valuable company—Tencent—eclipse India's biggest M&A deal? Well, the dollars and cents seem to add up
June 2022. It was a compelling question to ask. And the timing too seemed perfect. It had been close to a year—11 months to be precise--since Prosus, the Amsterdam-listed international investment arm of South African tech multinational Naspers, announced an all-cash $4.7 billion acquisition of BillDesk in August 2021. What was billed as India’s biggest fintech M&A deal was still awaiting the regulatory nod in India. The inordinate delay was unnerving. What, though, was most disconcerting was the financial aspect of the deal. “From a capital allocation standpoint,” Bank of America’s Cesar Tiron pointed out during the FY22 earnings call of Prosus in June this year, ”it doesn’t make sense to pursue the transaction, especially given changes to peers’ valuations since the transaction was announced.”