Investors with well-filled war chests are finding it hard to identify potential takeover targets and many deals which were underway have been put on ice, the Financieele Dagblad said on Monday.

Since March, there have been 15 takeover deals with a combined value of €124m in the Netherlands, the FD said, based on figures from news agency Bloomberg. This is down 99.7% on the same period last year and most of cash was spent on a single deal.

‘We are getting up to 80% more calls than usual from investors with capital to make a deal,’ Tom Beltman, of M&A specialist Marktlink, told the paper. ‘But we are not seeing legions of companies which need it. They have the short-term liquidity to survive.’

Banks are also putting the brakes on, Wouter Helder of law firm Lexence said. ‘This means private equity firms are easing back on takeovers because they need bank financing to make sure they earn the right returns.’

‘The big deals, from a few hundred million euros, have gone quiet,’ Jeroen Valk, head of the M&A department at EY told the paper. ‘Companies which don’t have to sell are not doing so.’

Nevertheless, Valk told the paper he expects more movement in the coming months and ‘a sharp increase’ in the second half of the year.