2018 has been a bumper year so far for our capital raising lawyers.

As at 30 September, our team has worked on a total of 117 financing deals that have either closed, or are still live and aiming to close prior to Christmas.  This compares to a total of 67 transactions closed in 2017, and 83 closed in 2018.

Our Southeast Asia team has been a big contributor to the growth in deal numbers. In 49 of these deals we are representing Southeast Asian tech companies or VCs. This compares to the 24 Southeast Asian deals we helped close in 2018.

New Zealand numbers are also up on 2017.  Deals involving Kiwi tech companies for the year to date (closed and live) are at 72, compared to a total of 43 closed last year.

Of course, not all of the live deals will end up closing.   However, this will be partly balanced by an inevitable rush of bridge funding deals in November and December.

Our best guess is that our total number of deals closed will top 100 for the first time.

Looking forward, the conditions for capital raising are still very favourable for both Kiwi and Southeast Asian tech companies.

For Kiwi companies, we expect this to continue well into 2019 as some of the liquidity created by this year’s great exits is recycled into new investments.

In Southeast Asia, our VC contacts tell us they are allocating large sums of investment to tech companies servicing the burgeoning Indonesian economy.  Singapore domiciled companies continue to be the preferred investment vehicle, however.