The watchword for the M&A market in 2025 was “trillion.” Emerging from concerns of market volatility earlier this year, 2025’s global mergers and acquisitions’ statistics suggest there is a reignited confidence in the market. Global M&A deals cover a variety of transaction types, including controlling-stake mergers and acquisitions, minority purchases, private equity investments, and venture capital financing rounds.
Even when considering a subset of global deal activity, the same holds true. Controlling-stake M&A deals surpassed $1 trillion in deal volume in Q4 2025—a quarterly benchmark that even 2021 was unable to reach. The fourth quarter was also big in mega ...