The new M&A tables are out for 2012 from ACG courtesy of Thomson Reuters. These tables trap all deals done in the US over $10m. I’ve poured over the detail and extracted some conclusions:

Conclusions

1. In 2012 the draft number above implies 6039 deals were completed involving US sellers. Approximately down 4% on 2011′s total of 6279.
2. Average deal value in 2012 from these sellers was $130m.
3. The highest average deal value came from the Financial Sector at $2.4Bn from 4 deals.
4. The lowest average deal value came from the sector Personal Services at $1m from 25 deals. These were less than $10m on average because some would have involved minority stakes.
5. On average overseas acquirers paid $165m covering 945 deals compared with an average of $123m per deal for US acquirers from 5094 deals.
6. A summary of the top sectors by deal value is as follows:

Overall the scary part for the owner of an SMB is how rare the exiting for $10m or more is. Given the 5.9m firms who run a payroll in the US, the statistic to ponder is that only 1 in 1000 of you will sell out for $10m or more in any year given these tables.