The State of the deal: M&A trends 2019

Executive summary

Corporate and private equity executives focused on mergers and acquisitions (M&A) anticipate further acceleration of deal flow in 2019—both in the number of transactions and in their size—which would further extend several years of record M&A activity.

In the sixth M&A trends report from Deloitte US, we gleaned insight from 1,000 executives at corporations and private equity firms about deal activity in the current year and their expectations for the next 12 months. Given current uncertainties facing dealmakers, the somewhat surprising results point to sustained, strong deal activity, and the numbers are striking: 76 percent of M&A executives at US-headquartered corporations and 87 percent of M&A leaders at domestic private equity firms expect the number of deals their organizations will close over the next year to increase. On top of that, there is strong sentiment that the size of those transactions will be larger than the ones brokered in 2018—with seven in 10 respondents saying they anticipate bigger deals.