USAID looks for M&A deal data

As part of its mission, the U.S. Agency for International Development needs data and is looking for 20 years of it on mergers and acquisitions that cross borders.

The agency wants the data to help it make programming decisions on “country specific needs and opportunities,” according to the solicitation.

USAID says it wants to track foreign financial investments. Most of these come from official investments and direct investments. Official investments are relatively easy to track but direct investments by companies are not.

To get information of the direct-by-company variety, you have to comb through documents such as news articles, annual reports and public filings. USAID wants to buy a database that has all of that information collected and one that updates continually. Near real-time.

USAID wants to share the data across the entire agency and with country teams at U.S. embassies overseas.

Some of the information they want included in the data base include: data of the transaction, when it was announced, deal status, nationality of acquiring company, parent company of the buyer, value, industry sectors and several other elements.

Bids are due June 26.

Obviously, this isn’t a traditional sort of IT contract. But it is interesting that USAID finds so much value in that kind of information.