Market conditions and outlook

• BCG finds executives lack conviction, not capital
• Global M&A is down 9% while Datasite volumes are up 12%
• Q3 close rate rose 3 points to 49% as kickoffs fell 2%
• Lower middle market holds up while large deals stall on valuation gaps
• PE was in 11% of lower middle market deals, add ons another 24%
• M&A East showed active but selective buyers
• H1 2026 deals up 15%, foreign buyers of German firms up 38.5%
• Uncertainty is forcing sharper deal discipline

‍

Sector signals

• Wealth management M&A is at a record pace and valuation
• SEG SaaS Index swung from down 30% in April to up 7.4% year to date
• Software buyers now pay for AI defensibility and retention
• FinTech M&A is recovering despite decade low public multiples
• Creator economy hit 97 deals year to date, a record
• Healthcare saw 14 deals above $4 billion as AI firms buy workflows

‍

Announced deals and corporate moves

• C.H. Robinson to acquire RXO for $5.8 billion
• Devon sells Eagle Ford assets to Crescent for $4.2 billion
• Plus500 bought Hedge in the US and Guru in Brazil in one week
• SGS posted record Q3 sales growth of 14.6%, aided by M&A
• Paperbox sold to Adlib in an agentic AI insurance deal
• EY Ireland advised ITQuotes on its sale to Bechtle
• Weil Gotshal partners met on 20 October to weigh a merger
• Hogan Lovells Cadwalader set post merger priorities on people and society
• MARTAC added vessel capacity through partnership, not acquisition
• PROX Advisors launched for founder led sell side deals

‍

Valuation, pricing and deal terms

• EBITDA normalization produced a EUR 22.0 million versus EUR 9.6 million gap
• Identical EBITDA earns different multiples depending on earnings quality
• Only about 12% of earn out value across 100+ deals was paid
• Earn out tax treatment differs across five European jurisdictions
• Working capital adjustments drive much of price negotiation
• Early stage valuation estimates are unreliable without normalized earnings
• Larger consulting firms earn multiples about twenty percent higher
• At 1.25x coverage, a 20% cash flow drop erases the cushion
• UK Founders' Relief offers 10% CGT on gains up to GBP 10 million
• PE backed firms beat peers on revenue growth, 12.9% versus 10.4%

‍

Preparing for and running a transaction

• Start 2027 target searches now, as signing takes nine to twelve months
• Secret sale processes risk losing key managers
• Clean accounting speeds diligence and protects value
• Quality of Earnings reviews and disclosure remain central
• Interest based negotiation breaks position based deadlocks
• R&W insurance does not cover all deal exposures
• Individual buyers face PE rivals with $100 million or more in capital
• Locked Box and Completion Account mechanisms allocate pricing risk

‍

Integration and post deal performance

• IFF's $26.2 billion DuPont deal missed its 26% EBITDA margin target at 17.2%
• About 70% of acquisitions fail to deliver expected value
• Culture clashes and vague integration plans recur at every deal size
• Only 13 of 204 M&A tools target post merger integration
• Chiefs of Staff running integration alongside operations leak deal value
• The Alloy Model embeds coaching in integration leadership
• A CFO framework chooses to invest more, restructure or shut down

‍

AI and deal technology

• Datasite runs 55,000 deals annually and launched Blueflame Assistant
• Valu8 became Grata Intelligence inside Datasite's data platform
• Slalom's Deal Analyzer produces a deal brief in minutes
• Agentic AI is entering pipeline management, target research and diligence
• AI optimizes parts of the process but selling stays human
• Acquirers must choose between being a tools company or a platform

‍

Events and recognition

• An online retail buy and build strategy won the German M&A Award
• Schäflein Group's sale to FM Logistic placed top three in M&A Advisory
• German M&A Award nominees showed courage is not a function of size
• Swiss Biotech CFO Meeting covered the Memo Therapeutics sell side case
• Festival of Entrepreneurs runs 4 November at NEC Birmingham
• M&A Forum examined recurring deal tax challenges

‍

Thanks to Cameron Kinloch, Malik Ladhani, Jake Tobin, Pieter Slegers, Andrew Reside, Pete Miller, Esteban Maidana, Jan Steinbächer, Daniel Callegari, Joris Kersten, Bradley Dlatt, Kai Hesselmann, Daniel Friedman, Merlin Piscitelli, Todd Albright, Meera Shah, Wassia Kamon, David Lam, Megan Baker, John Marsh, J. Patrick Galleher, Brandon Kelly, Elizabeth Kaske, Goran Pavlovski, Patrick Bauer, John Orsini, Brian Dukes, Sheharyar Khan, Lindsey M. Wendler, Rusty Wiley, Vladlen Shulepov, Linhua G., Anders Lundgren, Vincenzo T., Richard Lock, Ronan Murray, Adam Kaplan, Chris von Bogdandy, Max Garland, Owen Jones, David Prowse, Nicky Cotter, Kison Patel, Peter Hart, Herwig Springer, Drew F., Mark Williams, Prof. Joe O'Mahoney, Ömer F. Güven, Marcus von Goldacker, Alec Ellison, Johnny Sebastian, Sima Griffith, Paxton Earl, Gaurav Bhasin, James Creech, Tabber B. Benedict, Miguel Zaldivar, Pierre DELANNOY, Ari Kaplan, Christoph Schäfer, Olga Blyweiss, Guy Bartlett, Nadja Langlez, Stefan Gerhard Schneider and Bethany Winsby and everyone else who contributed insights to this edition. Find the full list of posts and voices on LinkedIn: