In fact 68 transactions worth at least USD 10 billion. each changed the face of sectors – from media to industry – as companies took advantage of favorable market conditions, easy availability of financing and looser regulations in the US to carry out strategic actions that would not otherwise be possible – writes the Financial Times.
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Number of mergers and acquisitions in the world increased by almost 50 percent compared to 2024reaching USD 4.5 trillion. – according to data from the London Stock Exchange Group. This is the second highest result in the over forty-year history of such rankingssecond only to the pandemic deal frenzy of 2021.
— I haven't seen mergers and acquisitions on this scale in a decade. These are deals that really change industries, Tony Kim, co-president of investment bank Centerview Partners, told the Financial Times. — M&A events of this magnitude require many key factors, and they all seem to be in place at the moment.
The intermediaries made money
The wave of deals drove investment fees to an estimated $135 billion, a 9 percent year-over-year increase. More than half of these fees came from the US, where the value of transactions involving US companies reached USD 2.3 trillion – the highest share since 1998.
— Currently, risk appetite is high, and financing conditions and antitrust regulations are favorable to concluding transactions. It's clear that “all lights are green” when it comes to bringing most deals to completion right now, said Mark McMaster, global head of M&A at Lazard.
The biggest transactions of the past year include the competition between Netflix and Paramount about Warner Bros. Discovery and a rail mega merger Union Pacific with Norfolk Southern, which will result in the creation of a transcontinental giant worth USD 250 billion.
“This is reminiscent of the situation in 2021, the only year when the transaction value exceeded $4 trillion. Back then, the largest transactions included the merger of WarnerMedia with Discovery and the acquisition of Kansas City Southern by Canadian Pacific Railway for $31 billion.” – writes “FT”.
Donald Trump encouraged the merger
Leading mergers and acquisitions experts admit that the Trump administration's moves to loosen regulations have encouraged companies to consider mergers they might have previously been wary of.
— We see that our corporate clients are willing to take regulatory risk when it comes to strategic transactions. They also note that regulators are open to meaningful dialogue, said Andrew Nussbaum, co-chair of the executive committee at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.
Widespread “liberation day” tariffs announced in early April briefly halted the initial momentum. However, the market rebounded in the following weeks, and the year ended with two quarters in a row in which the value of mergers and acquisitions exceeded $1 trillion – for the first time in four years.
