Mergers and Acquisitions when it comes to the first half of 2025 were not what the investment bankers would have hoped for; however, a burst of big deals across Asia and renewed optimism in the US market could be as well, paving the way for certain mega deals.
It is well to be noted that the market uncertainties that have stemmed out of the US president, Donald Trump’s trade war, wider political tensions, and high interest rates have already hampered but not completely derailed what bankers anticipated to be a blockbuster year when it comes to global mergers and acquisitions.
The tariff policies of Trump went on to kick off by his self-styled liberation day on April 2 by casting a chill across the market and pushing many deals as well as initial public offerings into the quarters that would follow.
According to the global co-head of equity capital markets at UBS, Tommy Reuger, the anticipation was that one could see a lot of activity within the first half of 2025, but the reality is that there was nothing at all.
It is well to be noted that the interviews with over a dozen top bankers happen to signal rising confidence, which states that the worst of the market turbulence is now over. The fresh record high for the S&P 500 as well as NASDAQ indexes has helped to renew optimism that mergers and acquisitions in the second half of 2025 are going to be even stronger.
According to the co-head of global mergers and acquisitions at the Bank of America, Ivan Farman, there happened to be a lot of deals that were put on hold, which are now going to come back. He added that he is indeed optimistic about the second half of 2025. According to the dealmakers, there is a reason for optimism because of the recovery in the market and also the easier antitrust policies by Trump, thereby paving the way for bigger deals.
As per John Collins, who happens to be the global co-head of mergers and acquisitions at Morgan Stanley, the probability of very large transactions of almost $50 billion plus has increased as compared to a year ago.
Apparently, almost $2.4 trillion in deals were signed between January 1 and June 27, which is up 26% from the same period in 2024. Part of that increase did come from Asia, where the activity went on to more than double to $583.9 billion.
Interestingly, the deal activity across North America grew to almost $1.04 trillion from January 1 to June 27, which was up 17% as compared to the first half of 2024.
The market volatility as measured by the VIX index has gone on to drop to the levels that indicate that the investors now feel safer to go ahead and invest today. According to Philip Ross, vice chairman of Jefferies ’Bank, it has been clear that the momentum continues to grow, thereby paving the way for transactions that are large. People are indeed feeling more positive as compared to what they were feeling a month ago and have already started to execute their decisions.
Notably, as the markets calm down, institutional investors are going to start to jump back within their equities, and more companies will be moving forward with their IPO plans, which had been postponed earlier in the quarter. As per Rueger, the combination of all those together has gone on to create within the last 3 to 4 weeks an incredibly robust new issue backdrop, and they are now seeing a significant uptick in the activity.
The head of equity capital markets for Europe, Africa, and the Middle East at Deutsche Bank, Saadi Soudavar, said that the equity markets have gone on to show their remarkable capacity to shrug off immense tariff- and geopolitical-related volatility.
What are the morale boosters?
There are a few big deals that have helped to boost the market morale at the height of the turmoil caused by tariffs. This includes the $24.25 billion acquisition by Global Payments of a card processing and account services firm in April 2025.
In addition to this, Charter Communications, in May 2025, went on to agree to buy privately held rival Cox Communications for a massive amount of $21.9 billion. Apart from this US-based equipment manufacturer named Chart Industries, Flowserve Corp. also agreed to a merger, thereby valuing the combined company at almost $19 billion.
It is worth noting that there were almost 17,528 deals that were signed during the first half of 2025 as compared to 20,583 deals in the same period of 2024, as per Dealogic. However, this year’s deals happened to be bigger in size, thereby pushing the total value of the deal much higher. There was a 62% rise in the number of $10 billion-plus deals as compared to the same period in 2024.
It is well to be noted that dealmaking in Asia happened to be a bright spot. Overall mergers and acquisitions activity grew to almost $584 billion in the first six months of 2025, which is up from $270 billion a year back.
Led by China and Japan, the region happened to comprise 27.3% of the overall global mergers and acquisitions activity, thereby gaining more than 11 percentage points from the same period in 2024. Some of the region’s biggest deals came from the Asia Pacific region.
Toyota Motor announced its plans on June 3, 2025, to take one of its suppliers private for $33 billion. On June 16, a consortium that was led by the National Oil Company of Abu Dhabi launched an $18.7 billion all-cash takeover of the second-largest oil producer in Australia, Santos.
Apparently, Asia also went ahead and helped to drive global equity issuance higher in spite of the market volatility, with total volume growing almost 8% to $350 billion from the same period in 2024.
As per the global vice chairman of investment banking at Goldman Sachs, Raghav Malian, one would see more Asia-to-Asia activity. He added that Japan has already been a big driver when it comes to the deal volumes across Asia, and they do believe that this trend is going to continue.