PERSISTENT undervaluation and the stock market's failure to recover to pre-Covid levels have led this year's privatisations to surpass last year's in deal value by 70 per cent.

Friday's announcement of Hi-P International CEO's offer for the contract manufacturer brings the tally for take-private deals this year to 17, with a combined deal value of about US$5.8 billion, according to Bloomberg data.

This is fewer than the 19 privatisation deals in the whole of 2019, but the deals last year only added up to US$3.4 billion, partly due to a number of very small deals which were less than S$10 million each.