Seeking Growth – US Based Buyers Look to Europe.

Video Transcription

Hello, I’m George Bucur, managing director and co-head of MarshBerry specialty practice. Serving MGAs (managing general agent), MGUs (managing general underwriter), wholesale brokers and program managers, we’re here to bring you yet the latest of updates of what we are seeing impacting the specialty distribution segment.

Specifically, we are seeing a push of US (United States)-based buyers moving into Europe. And the main trend is that they’re using UK (United Kingdom) as their way to get into the rest of continental Europe. Now at this point in time, admittedly the UK is harboring most of the transactions, making up 37 transactions in 2023 through September, 27 transactions in 2022 and 15 transactions in 2021. You can see the trend as it moves upward. Most notably impacting the specialty distributors is that they make up roughly a third of the overall transaction activity. And this is relevant because in the States, we typically see specialty firms making up roughly 20% of the overall M&A (mergers and acquisitions) activity.

One unique thing to point out is that a main driver of these transactions are that they are public brokers, specifically with Gallagher (AJG) and Brown & Brown making up over 60% of the transaction activity since 2019. I think this is relevant to specialty firms because Brown & Brown and Gallagher have such developed and meaningful platforms within the delegated authority and wholesale sectors respectively. This is an early trend that we are identifying in that US buyers are going east as they try to expand their borders and capture more market share. And this is a trend that we do not expect to subside anytime soon.

If you have questions about how this trend may impact your organization or other questions about the specialty distribution sector, we encourage you to reach out.