These Charts Show Why Wall Street’s Gloom Over Deals Is Overblown
The total number of U.S. deals is down from last year, but transactions worth $1 billion to $10 billion
Key Points
Wall Street bankers haven’t gotten the surge in deals they had hoped for under President Trump, but the picture hasn’t been all bad.
U.S. deal value so far this year is up around 3.8% at $750 billion, though the number of deals is down.
Global deal value is up over 28%, with countries like Japan and Canada seeing big jumps.
Wall Street bankers who were bemoaning a slowdown in deals are finding themselves now looking at a reasonably solid year. Maybe.
The mood in M&A circles has been lukewarm under President Trump despite a number of megadeals this year, including Google’s $32 billion agreement to purchase the cybersecurity startup Wiz and Charter Communications’s $22 billion deal for Cox Communications. The damped enthusiasm is partly a result of dashed hopes: Many bankers had believed the Trump administration would usher in a surge in mergers and acquisitions after a relative lull in the past few years.
The reality has been mixed. The number of deals in 2025 so far with U.S.- based target companies is down sharply from the same period a year earlier. But the total value of those deals is up around 3.8% at $750 billion, according to the London Stock Exchange Group.
The number of deals worth between $1 billion and $10 billion, including debt, has jumped compared with last year. It is the relatively smaller deals—those worth less than $1 billion—that have fallen, and those account for the biggest share of transactions.
The biggest deals—those worth more than $10 billion—don’t come along as often. So far this year, there have been 13 such megadeals for U.S. targets, including debt. That is down from 16 during the same time last year.
Even the biggest deals this year have been more modest in size. Blockbuster deals in recent years have included ExxonMobil’s $60 billion deal for Pioneer Natural Resources in 2023 and Microsoft’s $75 billion acquisition of Activision in 2022, which dwarf the biggest transactions so far this year.
Many dealmakers have said they are still unsure about the Trump administration’s approach to antitrust regulation.
The picture also varies by sector. Some industries that are more insulated from tariffs, such as finance and technology, have seen a big pickup in transactions from last year. Consumer-products deals, meanwhile, are down from last year.
Dealmaking has been looking a lot better outside the U.S. Global deal value is up more than 28%, with countries including Japan and Canada seeing big jumps.
Still, the U.S. remains by far the biggest M&A market.