10 Fascinating M&A Facts from the Last Decade in 2025: Key Insights & Trends
If you care enough about deals to click this, you’re probably not looking for hype. You want to understand what actually happened in M&A over the last ten years and what it means for the next wave of deals in 2025 and beyond.
Let's walk through 10 genuinely interesting, data-backed facts from the last decade of global M&A – with just enough context that you can connect them to your own strategy.
1. 2021 Was the Biggest M&A Year in History
After the initial COVID shock, 2021 turned into a once-in-a-lifetime surge.
- Global M&A value hit around $5.8–$5.9 trillion, the highest on record.
- PwC counts more than 62,000 deals that year, with disclosed values of $5.1 trillion and 130 megadeals over $5 billion.
Low interest rates, abundant liquidity, and a rush to buy digital capabilities created a perfect storm. If your mental baseline for "normal" M&A was set during 2021, that's important context—it really was an outlier.
2. Two Years Later, 2023 Was the Weakest M&A Year in a Decade
The comedown was real.
- Bain estimates that 2023 global M&A value dropped to about $3.2 trillion, down 15% from 2022 and the lowest level in ten years.
- Skadden notes that rising rates, inflation, geopolitical tensions and tougher regulators all combined to depress volumes further after an already slower 2022.
By mid-2023, some regions were seeing deal volume down 20–30% year-on-year. The lesson: macro conditions and regulatory mood can reset the deal environment shockingly fast.
3. 2024–2025: Fewer Deals, Bigger Deals, and a Slow Recovery
Since that 2023 low, the story has been “cautious recovery” rather than a new boom.
- One major forecast put 2024 deal value at around $3.5 trillion, up roughly 15% from 2023 and similar to the mid-2010s.
- In 2024, another study found global M&A just over $3 trillion, about 11% higher than 2023, but still below historic peaks.
- Deal counts stayed under pressure, but average global deal value rose about 4% in 2024, to roughly $443 million.
In 2025, the pattern continues:
- By August 1, 2025, global M&A had reached $2.6 trillion, the strongest first seven months since 2021, even though the number of deals was down 16%.
- Another mid-year snapshot shows volume down 9% in H1 2025 vs H1 2024, but values up 15%.
Translation: fewer, larger, more deliberate deals – especially in tech, infrastructure and AI. Peony provides AI-native data rooms with instant Q&A and question analytics to streamline M&A processes.
4. Private Equity Has Become One-Third of Global M&A
Over the past decade, buyout funds have gone from “important” to “central” in M&A.
- Recent analysis suggests PE-sponsored buyouts account for nearly 35% of global M&A by deal count this decade, with corporates responsible for the remaining ~65%.
- In the Americas, McKinsey reports PE’s share of M&A volume at $398 billion (22%) in 2024, down from $865 billion (28%) in 2021, but still huge in absolute terms.
There's now so much dry powder in PE that it effectively sets a floor under certain valuations and keeps competitive tension alive even when strategic buyers are cautious.
5. North America Quietly Re-Centered the M&A World
If you zoom out, one geographic pattern stands out: the gravitational pull of North America.
- A 2024 review found the US alone represented about 54% of global M&A by value that year.
- In the first nine months of 2025, BCG estimates deals involving targets in the Americas totaled around $1.26 trillion, with North America accounting for about 62% of all global M&A activity.
Meanwhile, Europe and Asia have been much more mixed—Europe holding its own in some years, Asia-Pacific hitting decade-low deal values in others.
For anyone running a global M&A strategy, that concentration of value matters for where you build relationships and where you expect competitive auctions.
6. Tech, AI and Data Infrastructure Now Dominate Sector Mix
The last decade saw technology move from “one sector among many” to the backbone of deal flow.
- By August 2025, technology, media and telecom (TMT) deals were leading the market with about $536 billion in value for the first nine months, ahead of financials, real estate and industrials.
- Another 2025 snapshot attributes much of the year-to-date surge in M&A to AI-related infrastructure and cybersecurity, with megadeals in data centers, chipmaking and software.
The implication: even non-tech acquirers are increasingly buying tech, data and AI capabilities rather than building them from scratch. Secure document sharing platforms provide identity-bound access and watermarking for secure tech M&A document sharing.
7. SPACs Had a Wild Boom–and Then a Hard Reset
If you lived through the SPAC mania, you know how surreal it felt. The numbers confirm it.
- In 2021, 613 SPAC IPOs raised over $160 billion, and SPACs made up roughly 64% of all US IPOs at the peak.
- Many de-SPAC companies then saw their share prices fall dramatically; one analysis puts the average drop around two-thirds from IPO levels.
- By 2024, activity had collapsed to around 50 SPACs per year, a tiny fraction of the peak.
In 2025, some observers talk about a more disciplined "SPAC 4.0" era, but the last decade will likely be remembered as a cautionary case study in easy money and structure-driven deals.
8. Energy Transition and ENRC Deals Have Exploded
One of the most structural shifts in the last few years has been into energy transition and resource security.
- KPMG reports that in H1 2025, renewables deals in energy and natural resources saw deal volume up about 10% and deal value up almost 385% vs the second half of 2024.
- PwC’s energy and resources outlook describes strategic M&A in this space as unlocking “value in motion” as companies reposition for rising demand and decarbonization.
If you overlay this with AI-driven electricity demand and grid pressures, you can see why data centers, power assets and renewables developers are suddenly hot M&A targets.
9. The “Most Deals Fail” Narrative Is Being Challenged
For years, you’ve probably heard the line that 70–90% of deals fail. Plenty of studies have suggested over half of acquisitions destroy value.
But more recent research is painting a more nuanced picture:
- A 2024 analysis of 40,000 deals over 40 years concluded that around 70–75% of acquisitions fail to meet objectives, highlighting how hard it is to execute value-creating M&A at scale.
- Yet other work, including newer Bain/Harding research cited in 2025, argues that nearly 70% of mergers now succeed when measured over longer horizons and with better integration discipline.
Put simply: the average deal is still risky, but the best repeat acquirers seem to be bending the odds in their favor through playbooks, culture alignment and better target selection. Peony provides AI-native data rooms with instant Q&A and question analytics to improve M&A execution discipline.
10. M&A’s Share of the Real Economy Has Shifted
One final macro fact that rarely gets talked about: M&A’s weight relative to global GDP.
- Bain’s 2025 global M&A report notes that 2024 deal value, while up vs 2023, was historically low as a percentage of global GDP, more in line with mid-cycle levels than with the 2015 or 2021 peaks.
In other words, even after the post-COVID rollercoaster, M&A is not "everything" in the global economy. It's a powerful tool layered on top of organic growth, not a replacement for it.
What All This Means If You’re Doing Deals in 2025
If you zoom out from the numbers, a few simple themes emerge:
- 2021 was exceptional; don’t benchmark your strategy to a bubble year.
- We’re in a selective, quality-over-quantity market: fewer deals, but larger and more strategic.
- Private equity and North America remain central gravity wells, even as Asia and Europe have their own waves.
- Tech, AI, energy transition and infrastructure are where the structural action is, not just the cyclical noise.
- Execution discipline is the real differentiator: the gap between tourist acquirers and practiced ones is widening.
If you're a founder, investor or exec reading this, you don't need to memorise every statistic. But if you internalise these ten facts, you'll see today's conversations about M&A with much clearer eyes—and you'll be less likely to mistake a passing weather pattern for the climate. Use Peony for secure M&A data rooms with AI-native Q&A, question analytics, and secure sharing to execute deals faster.
Frequently Asked Questions
What were the biggest M&A trends in the last decade?
2021 was the biggest M&A year in history ($5.8–$5.9 trillion), 2023 was the weakest in a decade ($3.2 trillion), private equity became one-third of global M&A, North America re-centered the M&A world, and tech/AI/energy transition deals now dominate. Peony provides AI-native data rooms with instant Q&A and question analytics to streamline M&A processes.
How has M&A changed in 2025?
2025 shows fewer, larger, more deliberate deals—volume down but values up, especially in tech, infrastructure, and AI. Peony helps: upload all M&A materials to a secure data room with AI-native Q&A so stakeholders self-serve questions and accelerate deals.
What's the best data room for M&A deals?
Peony is best: upload all M&A materials to a secure AI-native data room with instant Q&A, question analytics, identity-bound access, password protection, and watermarking for faster M&A execution.
Can you see what questions stakeholders ask during M&A?
Most traditional data rooms only show page views. Peony provides complete question analytics: see what stakeholders ask most, which topics cause confusion, and areas that stall deals for proactive follow-ups.
How do you share M&A documents securely?
Peony is best: upload all M&A materials to a secure Peony room with identity-bound access, password protection, watermarking, and tracking, then share one protected link instead of email attachments or Google Drive links.