The Wall Street Bull statue covered in snow on Nov. 15, 2018.Erik Mcgregor | Lightrocket | Getty ImagesWall Street expected U.S. mergers and acquisitions to roar back in 2025. The reality was something closer to fits and starts. Following the re-election of President Donald Trump more than a year ago, executives and bankers prepared for a looser regulatory environment and a robust pipeline for mergers and acquisitions. Instead, they were met with tariff uncertainty, high interest rates and an unpredictable process for winning over the Trump administration and getting deal approval. While the year saw high-profile megadeals inked — Union Pacific’s proposed acquisition of Norfolk Southern for $85 billion; Netflix’s proposed takeover takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery’s streaming and studio assets for $72 billion; the pending take-private of Electronic Arts for roughly $50 billion — generally, U.S. deal volume was down year over year, according to Pitchbook data. “When you read the headlines they seem to suggest there has never been a better M&A market in the history of the planet. And while that’s true in some ways, when you get underneath the front page headlines and these massive transactions … you see a less active market,” said Benjamin Sibbett, co-head of the Americas M&A practice at Clifford Chance.Through Dec. 15 this year, there were roughly 13,900 transactions in the U.S., compared with 15,940 deals during the same period in 2024, the last year of the Biden administration, according to Pitchbook data. [embedded content]Deal value, however, was up, boosted by high-dollar-figure agreements: The 2025 deals tracked by Pitchbook totaled roughly $2.4 trillion in deal value, compared with roughly $1.83 trillion in 2024. The data represents both corporate M&A and private equity buyout activity and considers both announced and closed transactions. In particular, middle-market deal volume was low this year with those large M&A transactions padding the stats, according to a S&P Global analysis of dealmaking as of November. “This has been a decade-high level of megadeals, double the number of deals from last year. When you look at the importance of scale, it’s been an all-time record in terms of the premium that the market has given to scale,” said Anu Aiyengar, JPMorgan’s global head of Advisory and M&A, on a recent JPMorgan podcast episode. Over the last 10 years, 2021 remains the biggest year on record for U.S. deal activity, a reflection of low interest rates at the time. By this point in the year in 2021, there were 19,666 deals recorded with a total valuation of roughly $5.55 trillion, according to Pitchbook. Executives, lawyers and bankers like Aiyengar note that the sluggishness in dealmaking this year took place primarily in the first half of the year as Trump’s rolling tariff announcements roiled the financial markets and industry leaders tried to make sense of the effects. Uncertain timesU.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks at the White House in Washington, D.C., on April 2, 2025.Brendan Smialowski | Afp | Getty ImagesEarly in the year, consultants and bankers across sectors agreed that the Trump administration would make for smoother dealmaking and a friendlier regulatory environment after a number of big consumer deals were squashed by President Joe Biden’s Federal Trade Commission. Then came Trump’s trade war and his so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs. Trump’s April announcement of “reciprocal tariffs” on more than 180 countries left executives with an unclear path forward. “Macroeconomic uncertainty” became an often-used phrase in company updates and on investor calls as executives were hesitant to make plans or offer guidance without a clear understanding of how the future with tariffs would play out. “We knew there was going to be some disruption with tariffs, but probably not to the extent that sort of slowed things down,” KPMG partner and U.S. automotive leader Lenny LaRocca told CNBC of dealmaking in that sector. “With all that uncertainty around where things were going to land, I think it just put a big pause on M&A in general.”In addition to automakers, retail and consumer companies bore the brunt of the uncertainty as they navigated whether and how to pass on undetermined higher costs to already-burdened shoppers. Overall deal value in the consumer space was 17% lower during the first three quarters of 2025 than the same period a year prior, according to an October report from Boston Consulting Group. Meanwhile transactions by deal value grew in the industrials, energy and health care sectors, the study found. Through mid-December, there were 227 U.S. deals in the retail space, compared to 296 in the prior year period, according to Pitchbook. The combined valuation of deals, however, was more than $40 billion year-to-date, compared with roughly $28.4 billion at the same point in 2024, Pitchbook found. Add in the rise of artificial intell …
