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72 SMT007 MAGAZINE I JANUARY 2021 2020 turned out to be a strong year for M&A in the PCB and EMS/PCB Assembly markets. That is surprising considering the pandemic, US election uncertainty, and restrictions on travel. Although many people were travel- ing within the US, at least until the current surge in COVID-19 cases, international and domestic business travel has been greatly reduced, which has certainly dampened the M&A markets. According to our count, there have been 19 EMS deals and 7 PCB (bare board) deals in North America so far in 2020. There are several deals that we heard of that are in the works and there are probably many small deals that we have not heard of. Given the general eco- nomic climate in 2020 and the virtual prohi- bition on overseas deals, the number of com- pleted deals so far is impressive. For calendar 2018, we counted a total of 18 deals in North America in these sectors: 11 in EMS and 7 in PCB. For 2019, we counted a total of 30 deals, 22 in EMS and 8 in PCB. Here are some of the significant EMS and PCB deals so far in 2020: PCB Deals: • NCAB (public company in Sweden) acquired BBG (April 2020) (PCB Distributor) • Fralock (owned by Arsenal Capital) acquired Career Technologies USA (June 2020) • Additive Circuits Technologies acquired Winonics (June 2020) • Epec Technologies acquired NetVia (November 2020) • Printed Circuits, Inc. sold to PE Group Granite Equity (November 2020), which also owns All-Flex. EMS Deals: • Prime Technologies acquired TeligentEMS (January 2020) and I Technical Services (February 2020) • Zentech (BlackBern Partners) acquires Trilogy Circuits (January 2020) and Camtek (March 2020) • Princeton Technology Corp acquired by Intervala (April 2020) 2020 M&A Wrap-Up Punching Out! by Tom Kastner, GP VENTURES