The term mergers and acquisitions (MA) is pretty common in the business and entrepreneurial world. It refers to the consolidation of business and business assets through financial transactions and deals between companies. MA agreements might involve one company purchasing and absorbing another company outright, it could be a merger to create a whole new company, the takeover of some assets or stock, or, it can even involve a hostile takeover. Acquisitions and exits are often seen as a solution, and sometimes as a last resort, to smaller startups struggling to raise funding and facing valuation cuts. At the same time, more mature players have seen it as a consolidative way to expand their presence, create new revenue streams and access new tech and talent. Here, we take a look at what happened in February outlining the top 10 deals:London-based provider of investment, pension, financial wellbeing and workplace savings Cushon, founded in 2014, was acquired by the UK-based NatWest Group for €174.8 million

It’s that time of the year. The French government and the government-backed initiative La French Tech gathered applications, processed the numbers and ranked the 120 top-performing startups in France right now, with a special category for the top 40 ones. The result is two rankings that are based on objective criteria — the Next40 and French Tech 120.Before I tell you more about the criteria and what you get when you’re part of these lists, here’s this year’s French Tech 120 and Next40:Image Credits: La French TechCompared to last year’s Next40, 29 of them were already part of the top category. It means that 11 startups joined the group — some of them were already part of the French Tech 120 and out-performed the rest of the startup industry, such as EcoVadis, NW Storm, Innovafeed, Pigment and Verkor.Newcomers in the Next40 are ClubFunding (a real estate investment platform), Electra and ZePlug (two EV charging startups), Flying Whales (airship manufacturer), SAFTI (real estate marketplace) and Wifirst (a professional telecom company).As for last year’s Next40 startups, some of them became public companies — the French government only wants to include private companies in these rankings to give some visibility to companies that don’t share their earnings publicly. That’s the reason why Deezer is no longer here this year and OVHcloud was removed from the list last year. Others moved down to the second category or dropped of the rankings altogether

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