China Inc's on the prowl

Rising labor costs, global ambitions and need for brands and technology give outbound M&A activity momentum

And so, yet another Chinese company (Midea Group Co Ltd) has agreed to acquire yet another foreign company (the white goods business of Japan's Toshiba Corp), creating a sense of deja vu.

Experts on mergers and acquisitions, or M&A, reckon the March 17 agreement reached by China's leading home appliances maker could eventually lead to a transaction worth more than $1 billion. That would make it the latest, but certainly not the last, in a string of recent overseas M&A deals by Chinese firms.