The recruitment sector is seeing slow but steady growth in M&A activity, according to Tim Evans, managing director at Boxington Group.

Evans’ comments follow Office for National Statistics figures out this week that in the wider UK economy the value of acquisitions abroad by UK companies rose to £18.3bn in Q1 2011, up from £3.8bn in Q4 2010, while expenditure on acquisitions in the UK by foreign companies fell slightly to £6.4bn in Q1 2011 from £7bn the previous quarter.

Meanwhile,expenditure on acquisitions in the UK by UK companies fell to £1.2bn in Q1 2011 from £6.3bn in Q4 2010.

Evans told Recruiter that the recruitment sector appears to be bucking this trend. “Interestingly, this increase is not reflected by UK companies in the recruitment sector as many have already begun their overseas expansion on an organic basis a number of years ago.

“Where acquisitions are being contemplated by recruitment companies instead of organic growth, the overseas target acquisitions are quite small and few deals are being consummated.

“Reflecting the wider M&A market, there has been steady but low volume of UK recruitment deals by overseas buyers including Aston Carter and Right4Staff in Q1, although Q2 is seeing a much higher level of interest, which will come through in higher deal completions towards the end of the year.

“Likewise, although few UK-to-UK deals happened in Q1, there is an increasing volume of deals currently progressing towards due diligence, which will impact on deal figures later in the year and next year. Additionally we are also seeing a keen focus by private individuals and private equity owners on developing exit strategies towards 2012-14.”