Global M&A
Market Outlook

North America M&A outlook 

Jay Hoffman: I'm Jay Hoffman. I run the North American mergers and acquisitions business here at J.P. Morgan. We're very excited about the prospects for our business for 2025. The stars are aligning for us to have a great year. For the first time in several years, we've got an accommodating macroeconomic and regulatory policy at the same time, with the incoming Trump 2.0 administration.

On the strategic side, a number of our clients who've been thinking about doing large transactions over the last several years, but had been deterred by what was going on in the regulatory environment, are revisiting those, and we think we're going to see those deals come to fruition in 2025. On top of that, we're optimistic that the financial sponsor machinery will start to hum again as the number of sponsors have returned substantial DPI to their investors and are ready to spend more money.

There will definitely be some things to be mindful of. The geopolitical situation continues to be tense in a number of areas around the world, and I think there will be some aspects of Trump economic policies that are likely to drive inflation higher, which can have a counter impact on both the economy and the ability to get deals done. But overall, I think the optimism for 2025 is more than justified.

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EMEA M&A outlook

Dwayne Lysaght: I'm Dwayne Lysaght, and with my partner Cassander Verwey, we co-lead EMEA M&A for J.P. Morgan. We had a strong year in 2024, and we're looking forward to the same next year, hoping for a 10%-plus growth in volumes. There's a mixture in terms of industries, with strength really in diversified industries, consolidation there, and looking for scale. We're also seeking clarity in terms of strategic direction, maybe getting ahead of the activist trade.

In terms of energy transition, there's a lot of work to be done across EMEA on that topic, with some very interesting trends developing. Additionally, in the financial institution space, there could be a mixture of bank consolidation and consolidation amongst the big asset managers, which is a continuing trend. We're going to see quite a bit of M&A running through 2025 and beyond, we hope.

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APAC M&A outlook

Rohit Chatterji: I'm Rohit Chatterji, and I look after our M&A business in Asia-Pacific. The three things that excite me most about the outlook for next year are the opportunities in Japan, both onshore with carve-outs, take-privates, activism, defense, and outbound, particularly in healthcare, the financial sector, and industrials.

The second is sponsors. With the focus on DPI, the number of assets across Asia-Pacific that need to be transacted creates an opportunity for us to focus on delivering bespoke solutions into those monetizations for our clients, and we are looking forward to it.

The third opportunity is within infrastructure, whether it be in traditional infrastructure like toll roads, renewable energy, data centers, digital infrastructure, embedded infrastructure, or core plus type infrastructure with logistics and industrial gas businesses. There's a ton of assets in that sector that we think will eventually come to the market and will need to raise capital or be monetized in certain forms. That opportunity for us in the next year is going to be a very meaningful one.

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LATAM M&A outlook

Rafael Munoz: My name is Rafael Munoz and I'm head of the M&A team for Latin America. We're coming out of 2024, which saw a lot of activity, still below the historical trends. But we are very optimistic about what's coming in 2025.

We are most excited about cross-border activity, which still remains the most important aspect of our business in the region. There is a continued rationalization of international players, but most exciting today is that, whereas in the past it was just a changing of hands between North America to another North American or EMEA to another EMEA, we are seeing an evolving trend of regional champions. Latin American companies are trying to take advantage of these opportunities to grow within their countries or beyond the borders within Latin America.

We are also seeing increased activity by the Asian quarter, particularly in China as it relates to oil and gas energy infrastructure, but also increasingly even the Middle East, especially as it relates to consumer products and food and agriculture. It's exciting to see new countries coming back to activity, specifically Argentina, which had been in the background for a long time. With the political and economic rebirth that we are seeing in the country, there's a lot of optimism to see increased activity in M&A in 2025. Given where Argentina is, it should stay far beyond into the future.

Finally, Mexico will continue to be probably the most active country in the region. We are conscious that there's going to be a lot of political uncertainty, especially as it relates to the upcoming negotiation of the trade agreement with the U.S. and the political environment in both countries. However, we are very optimistic that the region will prevail because Mexico has become the most important partner for the U.S. and is now becoming the biggest exporter, surpassing China. We will continue to see increased investment because of near shoring and because of the infrastructure needs in the country, with a government that we expect to be more open than the previous one to foreign investment, as it relates to energy, infrastructure, and oil and gas.

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Shareholder Activism & Board Governance outlook 

Alfredo Porretti: I'm Alfredo Porretti, and I'm the global co-head of shareholder engagement at M&A Capital Markets. I lead the activism defense practice, and in 2025, we believe there's going to be a lot of activity in the U.S., but also more globally, particularly in Europe and the APAC region. Japan, Korea, and to some extent, Australia are going to be busy areas for our practice.

Rebecca Thornton: I'm Rebecca Thornton, and I run Director Advisory Services for J.P. Morgan. Along with my colleague Louise Bennetts, who runs EMEA Director Advisory Services out of London, we spend our days advising clients on all matters of governance activity, whether that's governance model, talent advisory, or best practices with regard to board composition. We're a one-stop shop for everything you need in the boardroom.

In terms of what we're looking forward to in 2025, I'd start with proxy season. It's always an opportunity for us to see different trends in terms of people coming and going in boards and how boards and governance models may be shifting. We're also anticipating continued activity in the private equity and IPO markets, as well as in shareholder engagement.

In addition to all that we're watching in terms of trends and statistics, we also anticipate more activity in terms of globalization. More and more companies are thinking about where to list and where to access talent that can develop the best-in-class board.

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Corporate Advisory outlook

Rama Variankaval: Rama Variankaval, I am the global head of corporate advisory practice at J.P. Morgan. The corporate advisory practice is made up of multiple verticals. We have our corporate finance advisory business, our ratings advisory practice, our M&A structuring practice, all things to do with climate and sustainability, and then our infrastructure practice.

What we kind of started the year off with is our annual report. We call it the Corporate Compass. We look at everything that we think is going to be important for the upcoming year, 2025, make some predictions and, obviously, we'll see how that all pans out. But really, my expectation, my hope, is for the year to come up with differentiated content that helps our clients make decisions.

We are living in an increasingly complicated world. There's a lot of change happening. The change seems to be happening faster and faster. There is the digitization trend, there is the new globalization trend, there is the decarbonization trend. There's a lot going on that corporate CEOs and CFOs have to navigate. We in corporate advisory hope to be an additive differentiator in ways that clients can use to make their decisions.

Idea generation is another thing we focus a lot on, whether it's ideas about what assets to own, what assets to sell, how to finance a business, how to communicate with shareholders, how to think about stakeholder management, all of that stuff. So that's kind of the value proposition we bring. We sit next to our M&A business, work in very close partnership with them, and look forward again to a year of adding value to clients.

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