Yum China Holdings, the operator of the Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) and Pizza Hut restaurant chains, is buying a controlling stake in food delivery service provider Daojia, as it looks to boost sales by better serving customers who chose to eat at home. The transaction – valued at up to USD200 million – is expected to close before the end of the month. Daojia, which also operates Sherpas food delivery services, was founded in 2010 and focuses on higher value food orders in major cities in China including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. The move is in line with Yum China’s strategy to accelerate growth through digital orders and delivery. Deliveries accounted for around 12% of Yum China’s sales in the first quarter of this year. Daojia has completed four rounds of financing totaling USD69.5 million, the latest one in September 2014, led by JD.com. The top three internet companies, Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu, are also competing for market share in the sector. Statistics from Big Data Research show that the transaction value of China’s food delivery market reached CNY176 billion in 2016, with delivery firms backed by the big three internet firms capturing a dominant 86.6% of the market, the South China Morning Post reports.

Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in China’s technology sector saw a year-on-year decline of 12.9% in the past four months, despite the massive USD5.5 billion funding round by Didi Chuxing, according to Mergermarket. “The value of technology deals reached USD19.9 billion across 65 transactions from January to April, down from USD22.8 billion in 73 deals recorded in the same period last year,” Mergermarket Financial Researcher Sophie Jin said. The decrease in the size and number of deals in the first four months of the year was chiefly attributed to Beijing’s tough capital controls. “The environment for tech M&As in China has changed after the banner period in 2015, which saw a frenzy of large mergers among start-up unicorns,” Jin said. Last year, ride-hailing app operators Didi Dache and Kuaidi Dache announced their blockbuster merger, and Alibaba Group-backed Meituan.com agreed to merge with Tencent Holdings’ Dianping.com to form China’s largest online-to-offline local services provider. Jin said Didi’s huge financing round last month represented the largest Chinese technology financing round to date, surpassing the USD4.5 billion raised by Alibaba affiliate Ant Financial Services Group in April last year. The Didi fundraising made up 27.6% of the total domestic technology M&A activity in the first four months of this year.

Mergermarket said the next two biggest technology deals during the period were the USD1.1 billion raised in January by Koubei, the online-to-offline service joint venture of Alibaba and Ant Financial, and the USD1 billion obtained early last month by Beijing Bytedance Technology, operator of the Toutiao news and information mobile app. Across all sectors, there were 413 deals worth USD82.1 billion in China in the first quarter, down 24.6% in value compared with 479 deals worth USD108.8 billion in the first three months of last year, the South China Morning Post reports.

China National Chemical Corp (ChemChina) said that shareholders of Syngenta, the Swiss agrochemical and seed producer, have accepted its USD43 billion takeover bid, paving the way for completion of China’s biggest international acquisition deal. Based on preliminary numbers, 80.7% of shares were tendered in favor of the acquisition, higher than the minimum acceptance rate of 67% needed for the deal to go through, ChemChina said in a statement. The first payment settlement is scheduled for May 18. The Chinese company plans to delist Syngenta’s shares in Switzerland and the United States at an appropriate time. “The completion of this deal will help ChemChina become one of the world’s largest suppliers of pesticides and other crop-care chemicals,” said Ding Lixin, Researcher at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Beijing. However, Ding said Dow Chemical’s merger with DuPont and Bayer’s purchase of Monsanto, which occurred in the past two years, would continue to provide intense market competition with ChemChina.

Inner Mongolia Yili Industrial Group has scrapped a CNY4.6 billion takeover of Hong Kong-listed China Shengmu Organic Milk because it failed to get regulatory approval. Shanghai-listed Yili, China’s leading milk producer, also said it would not proceed with its plan to raise up to CNY9 billion in a private placement to finance the deal after the offer collapsed. In October Yili, via a subsidiary company, announced plans to purchase a 37% stake in Shengmu, the largest producer of hormone-free dairy products in China which meet the European standards for organic milk. The takeover offer was made when there was keen competition among Chinese milk producers to capture more of the premium market segment amid a shift to high end products and more healthy food by the rising Chinese middle class. The deal needed approval from Beijing’s Anti-Monopoly Bureau in order to proceed by the deadline of April 21. Shengmu said the collapse of the deal would not have a negative impact on its business. According to Euromonitor International, Yili is China’s largest dairy producer by retail sales with a 22.3% market share, followed by China Mengniu Dairy (17.3%) and Hebei Yangyuan Zhihui Beverage (5.2%), while Shengmu has a 0.7% share.

The total value of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in China’s technology, media and telecommunications (TMT) sector shrunk by 50% in the first quarter, which could augur badly for deal-making in the industry for the rest of this year, according to Mergermarket. There were 54 China-related TMT deals worth USD8.8 billion recorded in the first three months of this year, down from 60 transactions totaling USD17.5 billion in the same period last year. The top 5 Chinese buyers in the TMT field include GigaDevice Semiconductor, Tianjin Yingrui Huixin Corporate Management, Wolong Real Estate Group, and Sunbird Yacht. “That drop-off in both the number and size of deals in the first quarter is a reflection of China’s more stringent capital control, which has been implemented since late November last year,” said Mergermarket Financial Researcher Sophie Jin. “There is a probability that China-related technology, media and telecoms deals in 2017 would see their lowest level in years.” Jin added, however, that transactions involving the semiconductor industry may be less impacted by the government’s capital controls since expansion initiatives in this field form part of the country’s national development strategy.