Looking Good in the Lone Star State

The Austin Business Journal has fantastic news for the Lone Star State, and Austin is a gem in the midst of it all. Acquisitions and mergers are booming at 25 deals that exceed $1.8 million each last year. The top deal totaled $4.88 billion.

In the top five M&A deals, there was investments totaling $5.53 billion. Four of those deals closed in June of 2011. Although not listed in the top five, there were two other acquisitions that closed in 2011. Both were purchased by Austin-based Convio Inc. It bought Kansas-based StrategicOne for $6 million and U.K.-based Baigent Ltd. for $3.3 million. A full list of M&A’s can be found in the July 6th print issue of the Journal.

Texas wasn’t just in the news for mergers and acquisitions, though. There are definite in-roads being made in the way of manufacturing in our great state as well.

In June of this year, there are positive readings in the expansion of factory activity, rising from 5.5 to 15.5 in the production index. The production index is a key measure of state manufacturing conditions and we showed the strongest reading since spring of 2011.

There was also a new orders index that rose to 7.9 after having had three previous readings around zero. This indicates that we are in a growth trend since staying flat between February and June.

If that weren’t enough, the perception of broader economic conditions improved in June. While April and May proved negative in the general business activity index, by June, we were moving into positive territory.

Texas produces more than 9 percent of total manufactured goods in the United States. We rank just behind California in factory production.