Investor confidence in CE has continued its ascent and is now approaching levels not seen since the region’s peak period between 2003-2007, according to the latest Deloitte CE Private Equity Confidence Survey. The region’s downturn may at last be coming to an end: the proportion of respondents expecting deal activity to pick up has doubled to 60% since the last survey – which itself revealed the highest confidence levels in two years.

With few deals that came to fruition, Romania is also on an upward trend even though most of them were smaller type of projects.“There is definitely more activity compared to the previous year and we find it encouraging that there’s an increased deal activity which has not been going on for a while”, said Hein van Dam, Partner Deloitte Romania.

The IT&C industry along with the financial services spurred the interest of the PE investors between October 2013 to April 2014 in Romania, according to the Survey. With the acquisition of Nextebank and the acquisition of a majority stake in Star Storage, Axxess Capital was among the most active funds. Resource Partners, 3TS, Francisco Partners, Enterprise Investors and Intel Capital were also active in the period of time analyzed by the Survey.

According to the Survey, there are a number of factors that may contribute to the improved confidence particularly the fact that investors are again looking to the region. And more may be on the cards, with the proportion of respondents expecting to focus on fundraising doubling to nearly a fifth this survey (19%). Economic conditions are helping put rhythm back into the market: two thirds of respondents expect the economic backdrop to improve, up from 43% in the previous survey. This marks the highest level of economic confidence since 2004, when eight CE countries joined the EU.

And at long last, debt is expected to be more readily available by a quarter of respondents (27%). Fresh funds raised by private equity houses combined with leverage availability may help propel CE back into peak performance.

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