More firms look overseas for M&A

The number of Chinese companies that went looking overseas for merger and acquisition (M&A) targets jumped to 1,157 last year, an increase of 535 over the previous year's figure, according to the latest report from Zero2IPO Research Center, a China-based venture capital and private equity service provider.

The report found that the Chinese enterprises engaged in overseas M&A were mostly involved in the energy, machinery and minerals sectors.

The government has introduced a series of policies to push forward restructuring and development of energy-related sectors, which has encouraged the domestic energy companies to go overseas, said Xu Weiqing, spokesperson from the research center.