New York (HedgeCoVest.Com) – In today’s HedgeCoVest newsletter, we featured an article about the amount of M&A activity so far in 2015 and the Avago Technologies/ Broadcom deal was mentioned since it was the largest deal in the history of the semiconductor sector. The article had barely gone through its final proofing when yet another deal was announced within the chip sector.

This time the deal has Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) buying Altera (Nasdaq: ALTR). The deal between Avago and Broadcom still stands as the largest in the sector at $37 billion, but the deal between INTC and ALTR is a hefty $16.7 billion. While Intel is known for their personal computer chips, Altera is known more for the programmable chips they make. Intel wanted to expand in to the programmable line of chips as they expect growth in the market.

The article in the HedgeCoVest newsletter points out how 2015 is ahead of the pace set in 2014 for M&A activity and that was only through the first four months. The Avago/Broadcom deal came about in May and now this deal is kicking off the month of June with a bang, so the amount of M&A deals in 2015 could shatter the level reached in ’14 and could eclipse the previous record that was set in 2007. In ’07, the dollar total of the M&A activity reached $1.569 trillion and in ’14 the total was $1.562 trillion.

Rick Pendergraft
Research Analyst
HedgeCoVest