M&A lifts global foreign investment to highest since financial crisis: OECD

PARIS (Reuters) - Global flows of foreign direct investment reached their highest level last year since the financial crisis began, boosted by rich-world mergers and acquisitions, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation (OECD) and Development said on Friday.

FDI inflows surged by 25 percent in 2015 to $1.7 trillion on particularly strong flows into the wealthy countries belonging to the OECD, up 85 percent from 2014, according to the Paris-based organization.

Much of the increase stemmed from big cross-border mergers and acquisitions, some of them deals designed to reduce companies' U.S. tax obligations, the OECD said.

For the 20 economies that reported a detailed FDI breakdown, total equity inflows more than tripled last year with U.S. equity transactions at $225 billion, followed by $61 billion for the Netherlands and $40 billion for Ireland.

As countries implement new international standards for FDI statistics, the OECD was able to calculate returns on foreign investment in 2014 for 22 countries based on income earned on inward FDI as a ratio of total FDI stock.

Ireland experienced the highest rate of return on inward FDI at 14 percent, followed by the Czech Republic at 13 percent, Japan at 10 percent and Poland 10 percent.

For the full OECD report: http://www.oecd.org/daf/inv/investment-policy/FDI-in-Figures-April-2016.pdf

(Reporting by Leigh Thomas; Editing by Andrew Callus and Ed Osmond)

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