Summary

Through the first nine months of 2024, companies announced deals totaling approximately $1.6 trillion, spread across approximately 22,400 transactions. This represents a 10% increase in deal value versus the same period in 2023. The number of megadeals (those valued at more than $10 billion) has not matched the levels seen in 2022 and 2023. Companies reported only 17 megadeals in the first nine months of 2024, compared with 28 and 20 during the same period in 2022 and 2023, respectively. The vast majority (worth $877 billion) involved targets in North America, which accounted for 55% of overall global M&A activity. Deal value in Asia-Pacific declined by 5% to a ten-year low of $263 billion.   Among the key challenges: tougher regulatory environment and longer deal timelines. In the longer term, the continued push for green deals and the growing desire for digitisation (either to gain access to new technologies such as artificial intelligence or to expand capabilities and talent) will continue to drive the M&A recovery.