The volume of M&A in the world in 2025 exceeded $4 trillion for the first time since 2021, and the number of mega-deals has become a record, writes the Financial Times. According to the London Stock Exchange Group, the volume of M&A in 2025 increased by about 50% compared to 2024 and amounted to $4.5 trillion. This is the second highest figure in the more than forty-year history of tracking relevant data.
A record 68 mega-deals (valued at over $10 billion) were announced this year, many of which were transformational for their sectors.
Companies have taken advantage of favorable market conditions, availability of financing and relative regulatory leniency in the U.S. to strike strategic deals that would not have been possible in other environments.
“I haven’t seen such large M&A deals in a decade,” said Tony Kim, president of investment bank Centerview Partners. – Some of them have really transformed entire industries.”
Successful large mergers and acquisitions are only possible with a favorable combination of many important factors, which seems to be the case in 2025, he said.
Two of the biggest mega-deals of the past year were the purchase of the assets of media company Warner Bros. Discovery, for which Netflix Inc. and Paramount Skydance Corp. were competing, and the merger of rail operators Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern into a $250 billion-capitalization transcontinental giant.
A similar situation was seen in 2021, which remains a record year for M&A. At that time, the largest deals included the merger of media companies WarnerMedia and Discovery Inc. and the purchase by railroad operator Canadian Pacific Railway of its competitor Kansas City Southern.
Amid high M&A activity in 2025, investment banks generated near-record fees, earning $135 billion in investment banking – up 9% from a year earlier.
More than half of that amount came from deals in the U.S. M&A involving U.S. companies totaled $2.3 trillion this year, more than 51% of the global total (the highest since 1998).
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