M&A Statistics 2026
By Axis Intelligence Research
Co-author: Mia Scarlett | Last updated: August 10, 2026 | License: CC BY 4.0
Forty-seven transactions did the work of twenty-four thousand. In the first half of 2026, deals worth $10 billion or more accounted for roughly 46% of all announced global M&A value while representing about two-tenths of one percent of deal count — the most lopsided value concentration LSEG has recorded since its series began in 1980, against a deal count at a six-year low.
Quick Answer
Global announced M&A reached $2.8 trillion in H1 2026, up 48% year on year and the strongest first half since LSEG began tracking in 1980, on roughly 24,000 transactions — a 9% decline and the thinnest first-half count in six years. Axis Intelligence Research’s Merger Friction Index (MFI) reads 35.1 for U.S. fiscal 2025, down from 53.2 a year earlier: a 34% collapse in the regulatory friction facing billion-dollar deals, and the mechanism behind the value surge.
Key Findings
- Axis Intelligence Research finds that the Merger Friction Index — a four-component measure of U.S. antitrust friction built from Hart-Scott-Rodino filing data — fell from 53.2 in fiscal year 2024 to 35.1 in fiscal year 2025, a decline of 18.1 points, or 34%.
- Axis Intelligence Research finds that the average reported value of a U.S. premerger notification rose to $1.286 billion in fiscal 2025 from $1.064 billion in fiscal 2024, a 20.8% increase, even as the number of reportable transactions fell.
- Axis Intelligence Research finds that deals of $10 billion or more carried 46.4% of global announced M&A value in the first half of 2026 while accounting for 0.196% of announced transactions — a value-to-count concentration ratio of 237 to 1.
- Axis Intelligence Research finds that the European Commission prohibited zero concentrations across 776 notifications received in 2024 and 2025 combined, while clearing 90.5% of its 2025 Phase I compatibility decisions under the simplified procedure.
- Axis Intelligence Research finds that the U.S. second-request rate on transactions over $10 billion fell from 47.1% in fiscal 2024 to 21.1% in fiscal 2025 — the single steepest component move inside the MFI, and the clearest statistical signal of the 2026 megadeal wave.
How Big Is the M&A Market in 2026?
The headline number is $2.8 trillion of announced transactions in the first six months of 2026, up 48% against the same period of 2025 and the highest first-half total LSEG has recorded in more than four decades of data. Deal count moved the other way: roughly 24,000 announcements, down 9%, the weakest first half in six years.
That divergence is the whole story of 2026. Value and volume have decoupled.
For context on the base year, LSEG’s own Deals Intelligence analysis put full-year 2025 global M&A at $4.6 trillion, a 49% rise on 2024 and a level exceeded only once in the recorded series, with 68 transactions above $10 billion — the most megadeals in any year since tracking began. Cross-border value in 2025 reached $1.24 trillion, up 46%.
Global M&A headline figures, 2025 and H1 2026
| Metric | 2025 (full year) | H1 2026 | Change | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Announced M&A value | $4.6T | $2.8T | +48% YoY (H1) | LSEG Deals Intelligence |
| Announced transactions | — | ~24,000 | −9% YoY | LSEG Deals Intelligence |
| Deals ≥ $10B | 68 | 47 | — | LSEG Deals Intelligence |
| Value in deals ≥ $10B | — | >$1.3T | — | LSEG Deals Intelligence |
| Cross-border value | $1.24T (+46%) | $893B (+62%) | Best start since 2018 | LSEG Deals Intelligence |
| Technology sector value | — | $649B | Largest sector | LSEG Deals Intelligence |
Technology led every sector at $649 billion of announced H1 value, roughly a quarter of the global total. Cross-border activity reached $893 billion, up 62% and the strongest opening to a year since 2018.
Mia Scarlett, Business: Read those two columns against each other and the shape of the market falls out. Announced value up 48% on a deal count down 9% is not a broad recovery — it is a small number of very large balance sheets executing transactions they had been holding in reserve. The middle of the market did not participate in the way the headline implies. Anyone quoting “$2.8 trillion” as evidence that dealmaking is back should be asked which deals, and how many.
Why Did Global M&A Value Surge While Deal Count Fell?
Because the composition changed, not the participation rate.
Mega-deal concentration, H1 2026
Axis Intelligence Research computed the concentration directly from the LSEG H1 2026 figures:
- Deals ≥ $10B: 47 of ~24,000 announcements = 0.196% of count
- Value in those deals: $1.3T of $2.8T = 46.4% of value
- Concentration ratio: 237× (value share ÷ count share)
- Average announced deal: $116.7 million
- Average megadeal: $27.7 billion
- Average non-megadeal: $62.6 million
Formula: value share ÷ count share = (1,300 ÷ 2,800) ÷ (47 ÷ 24,000) = 0.4643 ÷ 0.00196 = 237. Inputs: LSEG Deals Intelligence H1 2026 review, reported July 2026. Axis-calculated; Python-verified.
The average transaction announced anywhere in the world in the first half of 2026 was worth $62.6 million once megadeals are stripped out. That is the market most acquirers actually operate in, and it is the number the $2.8 trillion headline hides.
| Segment | Deals | Share of count | Value | Share of value | Avg. deal size | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ≥ $10B (“megadeals”) | 47 | 0.196% | $1.3T | 46.4% | $27.7B | LSEG; Axis calculation |
| All other deals | ~23,953 | 99.804% | $1.5T | 53.6% | $62.6M | LSEG; Axis calculation |
| Total | ~24,000 | 100% | $2.8T | 100% | $116.7M | LSEG; Axis calculation |
The Axis Merger Friction Index (MFI): How Much Antitrust Risk Does a Big Deal Actually Carry?
Every M&A forecast published in 2026 asserts that the regulatory environment “loosened.” None of them quantify it. The Merger Friction Index (MFI) — an original Axis Intelligence Research metric — does.
MFI (Merger Friction Index) measures the regulatory friction encountered by large transactions in the United States on a 0–100 scale, where higher readings mean more friction. It is built entirely from the U.S. antitrust agencies’ own Hart-Scott-Rodino filing statistics, so it can be recomputed by anyone from public documents.
Formula and weights
MFI = (C1 × 0.20) + (C2 × 0.35) + (C3 × 0.25) + (C4 × 0.20)
C1 = Second-request rate, all adjusted HSR transactions (%)
C2 = Second-request rate, transactions over $10 billion (%)
C3 = Clearance rate (investigation opened), transactions over $10 billion (%)
C4 = 100 − early-termination grant rate (%), where grant rate = ET granted ÷ ET requested
Weights are set so that the two megadeal-specific components (C2, C3) carry 60% of the score, because the index is designed to describe the risk facing large transactions, not the average filing. C4 is inverted: granting early termination removes friction, so a high grant rate lowers the score.
MFI inputs and readings
| Component | Weight | FY2024 | FY2025 | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| C1 — second-request rate, all transactions | 0.20 | 3.0% | 2.1% | FTC/DOJ HSR Annual Report, Appendix A |
| C2 — second-request rate, deals > $10B | 0.35 | 47.1% | 21.1% | FTC/DOJ HSR Annual Report, Exhibit A, Table I |
| C3 — clearance rate, deals > $10B | 0.25 | 64.7% | 52.6% | FTC/DOJ HSR Annual Report, Exhibit A, Table I |
| Early-termination grant rate | — | 0.35% (3 of 858) | 29.09% (265 of 911) | FTC/DOJ HSR Annual Report, Appendix A |
| C4 — inverted ET component | 0.20 | 99.65 | 70.91 | Axis calculation |
| MFI reading | 53.2 | 35.1 | Axis Intelligence Research |
FY2025 arithmetic: (2.1 × 0.20) + (21.1 × 0.35) + (52.6 × 0.25) + (70.911 × 0.20) = 0.42 + 7.385 + 13.15 + 14.182 = 35.14
FY2024 arithmetic: (3.0 × 0.20) + (47.1 × 0.35) + (64.7 × 0.25) + (99.650 × 0.20) = 0.60 + 16.485 + 16.175 + 19.930 = 53.19
Change: −18.1 points, or −34.0%.
Both readings are drawn from the same two documents: the 48th Hart-Scott-Rodino Annual Report for fiscal year 2025 and the 47th report covering fiscal 2024, both published by the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice Antitrust Division. Fiscal 2025 covers October 1, 2024 through September 30, 2025. The FY2025 reading is the MFI baseline; FY2024 is computed on identical inputs for comparison.
What moved the index
Three of the four components loosened, and one of them collapsed.
The second-request rate on transactions over $10 billion fell from 47.1% to 21.1%. In fiscal 2024, a company announcing a deal above $10 billion faced roughly even odds of a full document production; in fiscal 2025, roughly one in five. Clearance — the internal step where one agency takes the file — fell from 64.7% to 52.6% for the same size band.
The early-termination series is the most abrupt reversal in the dataset. Early termination was suspended in February 2021; the agencies granted it 3 times out of 858 requests in fiscal 2024, and 265 times out of 911 in fiscal 2025. That single line moves C4 by nearly 29 points.
Mia Scarlett, Business: The MFI reading of 35.1 is worth more than the direction of travel it describes, because it converts a narrative into a number a CFO can put in a board paper. What the components show is that the change was concentrated at the top of the size distribution. The all-transactions second-request rate moved 0.9 points — noise, within its ten-year range of 1.6% to 3.0%. The over-$10B rate moved 26 points. Friction did not fall across the market; it fell for the deals big enough to need a merger-review budget in the first place. That is precisely the population that announced 47 transactions and $1.3 trillion in the following six months.
Scope of the MFI. The index describes filed U.S. transactions only. It does not capture litigation outcomes, remedy severity, state attorney-general action, foreign-investment screening, or deals abandoned before filing. It reads agency behaviour, not agency intent. And it is a fiscal-year measure: the FY2025 window closed on September 30, 2025, so it precedes the H1 2026 deal wave it helps explain rather than describing it concurrently. Cite the reading with its fiscal year attached.
U.S. Merger Filing Statistics: What the HSR Data Shows
Transactions reported, fiscal years 2016–2025
| Fiscal year | Transactions reported | Adjusted transactions | Second requests | 2nd-request rate | Share ≥ $1B | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 1,832 | 1,772 | 54 | 3.0% | 13.5% | FTC/DOJ HSR Annual Report |
| 2017 | 2,052 | 1,992 | 51 | 2.6% | 12.8% | FTC/DOJ HSR Annual Report |
| 2018 | 2,111 | 2,028 | 45 | 2.2% | 13.6% | FTC/DOJ HSR Annual Report |
| 2019 | 2,089 | 2,030 | 61 | 3.0% | 13.3% | FTC/DOJ HSR Annual Report |
| 2020 | 1,637 | 1,580 | 48 | 3.0% | 14.8% | FTC/DOJ HSR Annual Report |
| 2021 | 3,520 | 3,413 | 66 | 1.9% | 16.9% | FTC/DOJ HSR Annual Report |
| 2022 | 3,152 | 3,029 | 47 | 1.6% | 20.2% | FTC/DOJ HSR Annual Report |
| 2023 | 1,805 | 1,735 | 37 | 2.1% | 24.0% | FTC/DOJ HSR Annual Report |
| 2024 | 2,031 | 1,973 | 59 | 3.0% | 25.6% | FTC/DOJ HSR Annual Report |
| 2025 | 2,006 | 1,944 | 41 | 2.1% | 31.8% | FTC/DOJ HSR Annual Report |
Two series run in opposite directions across that decade. Transaction counts oscillate around 2,000 with a pandemic-era spike. The share of filings valued at $1 billion or more climbs almost monotonically, from 13.5% in fiscal 2016 to 31.8% in fiscal 2025 — an 18.3-point rise. Nearly a third of every reportable U.S. deal now clears the billion-dollar line.
The FTC and DOJ confirmed the fiscal 2025 figures jointly, reporting 18 merger enforcement actions — ten by the Antitrust Division, eight by the Commission — against 32 in fiscal 2024.
Reported transaction value and average deal size
The agencies disclose an aggregate: $2.5 trillion of reported transaction value in fiscal 2025, against $2.1 trillion in fiscal 2024. Divided by adjusted transaction counts, that produces an average reported deal value of:
- FY2025: $2.5T ÷ 1,944 = $1.286 billion
- FY2024: $2.1T ÷ 1,973 = $1.064 billion
- Change: +20.8%
Axis calculation; Python-verified. Aggregate values are agency-rounded to the nearest $0.1 trillion, so the averages carry that rounding.
A useful internal check: the size-band table shows 599 filings between $1 billion and $10 billion plus 19 above $10 billion, totalling 618 — which matches the 618 Tier 3 filings recorded in the fee schedule, and 618 ÷ 1,944 = 31.8%, the published share. The distribution is internally consistent.
U.S. HSR filings by transaction size, fiscal 2025
| Transaction range | Filings | Share | Clearance rate | 2nd-request rate | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $100M–$150M | 61 | 3.1% | 11.5% | 0.0% | FTC/DOJ HSR FY2025, Table I |
| $150M–$200M | 286 | 14.7% | 4.5% | 1.4% | FTC/DOJ HSR FY2025, Table I |
| $200M–$300M | 195 | 10.0% | 3.6% | 0.0% | FTC/DOJ HSR FY2025, Table I |
| $300M–$500M | 236 | 12.1% | 10.2% | 2.1% | FTC/DOJ HSR FY2025, Table I |
| $500M–$1B | 548 | 28.2% | 7.8% | 2.2% | FTC/DOJ HSR FY2025, Table I |
| $1B–$10B | 599 | 30.8% | 14.2% | 2.7% | FTC/DOJ HSR FY2025, Table I |
| Over $10B | 19 | 1.0% | 52.6% | 21.1% | FTC/DOJ HSR FY2025, Table I |
| All | 1,944 | 100% | 9.7% | 2.1% | FTC/DOJ HSR FY2025, Table I |
Nineteen transactions above $10 billion drew 10 of the 189 clearances and 4 of the 41 second requests. Scrutiny remains steeply size-dependent — it simply became less steep.
The size-of-transaction reporting threshold rose from $119.5 million to $126.4 million effective February 21, 2025, which mechanically removes the smallest filings from the count each year. Filing fees collected in fiscal 2025 totalled $564.4 million, split evenly between the two agencies.
How Does EU Merger Control Compare?
The European Commission publishes a continuous case series back to September 1990, which makes it the cleanest long-run merger dataset any regulator maintains. Axis Intelligence Research pulled the figures from the Commission’s merger case statistics file, current through May 31, 2026.
EU merger notifications and outcomes, 2021–2026 YTD
| Year | Notifications | Phase II opened (Art. 6.1(c)) | Phase I with commitments (Art. 6.2) | Prohibitions (Art. 8.3) | Withdrawn, Phase I | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 405 | 7 | 7 | 0 | 9 | European Commission, DG COMP |
| 2022 | 371 | 8 | 10 | 2 | 8 | European Commission, DG COMP |
| 2023 | 356 | 5 | 4 | 1 | 4 | European Commission, DG COMP |
| 2024 | 392 | 3 | 5 | 0 | 7 | European Commission, DG COMP |
| 2025 | 384 | 4 | 9 | 0 | 5 | European Commission, DG COMP |
| 2026 (Jan–May) | 158 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | European Commission, DG COMP |
Across 2024 and 2025 the Commission received 776 notifications and prohibited none. In the full series since 1990, 10,028 concentrations have been notified and 33 prohibited.
The routing matters more than the prohibitions. In 2025 the Commission adopted 359 Article 6.1(b) compatibility decisions, of which 325 — 90.5% — went through the simplified procedure. Through May 2026 the ratio is 148 of 165, or 89.7%. Nine in ten European merger reviews are now a short-form exercise.
A methodological note on why these two systems are not averaged. U.S. second requests and EU Phase II proceedings are not the same instrument: the second request is an evidentiary demand inside a waiting period, while Phase II is a formal in-depth investigation with a statutory 90-working-day clock. The populations differ too — HSR captures filings by transaction value, the EUMR captures concentrations by turnover thresholds. Averaging a 2.1% second-request rate with a 1.04% Phase II rate would produce a number with no meaning. Axis Intelligence Research publishes them side by side and does not merge them. The MFI is therefore a U.S. index by construction, and any future European counterpart will be built and published separately.
Mia Scarlett, Business: The comparison people want — is Brussels tougher than Washington? — is not answerable from decision counts, and the two figures that look comparable are the two most misleading. What the EU series does show cleanly is procedural: the notification count has sat in a 356-to-405 band for six consecutive years while the simplified-procedure share climbed past 90%. Brussels did not become more permissive; it became faster at the cases it was never going to contest. That is a throughput change, and it shows up in filing calendars long before it shows up in outcomes.
The Commission is not standing still. It published draft Merger Guidelines on April 30, 2026 — the broadest review of the framework in two decades, replacing texts dating from 2004 and 2008. Consultation closed June 26, 2026, and an economic study on dynamic merger effects is due by September 2026.
Which Sectors Are Driving M&A in 2026?
Technology is the largest single block: $649 billion of announced H1 2026 value, the biggest sector globally. Industrials and energy-and-power followed, both posting increases against 2025.
Underneath the technology headline is a split that matters for anyone modelling 2027 pipeline. Bain & Company’s 2026 Private Equity Midyear Report recorded private-equity technology deal value falling 70% between Q4 2025 and Q1 2026 as fewer large software transactions cleared. Bain’s proprietary MSCI analysis of Q1 buyout marks put the decline in private software valuations at roughly 8% overall — 8.9% in the United States against 4.2% in Europe, a materially smaller correction than listed software absorbed.
So corporate acquirers bought technology assets at record scale in the same half-year that financial sponsors pulled back from them. Both statements are true, and they describe different buyers with different cost of capital.
Private equity: the structural drag on deal count
| Metric | Reading | As of | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| PE tech deal value change, Q4 2025 → Q1 2026 | −70% | Q1 2026 | Bain & Company |
| Private software valuation change (PE marks) | ~−8% overall | Mar 31, 2026 | Bain / MSCI |
| — United States | −8.9% | Mar 31, 2026 | Bain / MSCI |
| — Europe | −4.2% | Mar 31, 2026 | Bain / MSCI |
| Unsold PE portfolio companies | ~33,000 | Mid-2026 | Bain & Company |
| Implied holding period | ~7 years | Mid-2026 | Bain & Company |
| Buyout assets exiting above next-to-last mark | ~75% | Mid-2026 | Bain / MSCI |
Roughly 33,000 companies are sitting in private-equity portfolios waiting for an exit, on an implied capital cycle of about seven years — well past historical norms. That backlog is a large part of why deal count is falling while value climbs: sponsors are the volume buyers in a normal market, and they are currently holding rather than transacting. Bain’s reading of NDA-flow data pointed to activity remaining roughly flat through July 2026.
Where Is Cross-Border M&A Growing?
Cross-border transactions reached $893 billion in the first half of 2026, up 62% year on year and the strongest start since 2018. That builds on 2025, when cross-border value rose 46% to $1.24 trillion.
Regionally, the picture in early 2026 was uneven. LSEG recorded Americas deal value of $440 billion across January and February, up 78%. European announced value ran 82% above 2025, with inbound interest into UK-listed targets a repeated driver. Asia-Pacific moved the other way: activity had declined 31% by the end of Q1, continuing a multi-year regional contraction, even after an $8.8 billion takeover bid for Australia’s BlueScope Steel lifted January volume to a four-year high of $50.8 billion.
| Region | Reading | Period | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Americas | $440B announced, +78% | Jan–Feb 2026 | LSEG Deals Intelligence |
| EMEA | +82% announced value | Q1 2026 vs Q1 2025 | LSEG Deals Intelligence |
| Asia-Pacific | −31% | Q1 2026 | LSEG Deals Intelligence |
| APAC single-month peak | $50.8B (four-year high) | January 2026 | LSEG Deals Intelligence |
| Global cross-border | $893B, +62% | H1 2026 | LSEG Deals Intelligence |
Technology accounted for 33% of global M&A transactions in the first two months of 2026, and 47% of those technology deals were announced in the United States.
Methodology
Collection. Axis Intelligence Research assembled this dataset between August 8 and August 10, 2026 from five primary sources, each fetched and read in full: the FTC/DOJ Hart-Scott-Rodino Annual Reports for fiscal years 2024 and 2025 (statutory reports to Congress, including Exhibit A statistical tables and Appendix A ten-year series); the European Commission DG COMP merger case statistics file covering September 21, 1990 through May 31, 2026; LSEG Deals Intelligence published analysis; and Bain & Company’s 2026 Private Equity Midyear Report media release. Every figure appearing in prose has a corresponding row in the accompanying CSV with source organisation, document, URL and retrieval date.
Formulas. The MFI formula, component definitions, weights and full arithmetic are disclosed in the index section above. The mega-deal concentration ratio, average deal sizes, average reported HSR transaction value, and all percentage changes were computed in Python from the primary values and independently re-run during verification. Rows carrying axis_calculated = yes in the CSV state their formula in the method_note column.
Reconciliation of the H1 2026 headline. Reported relays of the LSEG H1 2026 review carry two variants: $2.8 trillion with +48% growth and 47 deals above $10 billion, and $2.85 trillion with +50% growth and 48 such deals. The lower, more widely reproduced set is used throughout this report, and the concentration ratio is computed on it. Substituting the higher variant moves the concentration ratio from 237 to 228 — a difference that does not change the finding. Readers reconciling against a different aggregator should note that provider methodologies differ on announcement date, withdrawn deals, minority-stake treatment and currency conversion; totals are not directly comparable across LSEG, S&P Global, Dealogic and Mergermarket.
Scope. HSR statistics describe reportable U.S. transactions only, and the “adjusted transactions” baseline (1,944 in fiscal 2025) excludes filings on which the agencies were not authorised to issue second requests. A single business transaction can generate more than one HSR filing. EU notification counts are concentrations meeting EUMR turnover thresholds and exclude deals reviewed by national competition authorities. LSEG figures are announced, not completed, transactions; announced deals that later collapse remain in the series. The 2026 European figures cover January through May only. Agency aggregate transaction values are published rounded to the nearest $0.1 trillion.
Verification. Every number in this report was matched against its fetched source document during a separate verification pass. Every external link was confirmed live and confirmed to contain the claim attributed to it. No figure in this report is sourced from model memory or from a secondary aggregator.
About This Dataset
Title: M&A Statistics 2026
Creator and publisher: Axis Intelligence Research
Temporal coverage: 1990–2026, with detailed series for fiscal years 2016–2025 (United States) and calendar years 2021–2026 (European Union)
Spatial coverage: Global, with United States, European Union, Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific breakdowns
Format: CSV, UTF-8, one observation per row, full provenance columns
Licence: CC BY 4.0 — free to reuse, republish and redistribute with attribution
Original elements: Merger Friction Index (MFI) readings for fiscal 2024 and 2025; mega-deal value concentration ratio; average reported HSR transaction value series
Citation
APA: Axis Intelligence Research, & Scarlett, M. (2026, August 10). M&A statistics 2026. Axis Intelligence. https://axis-intelligence.com/mergers-and-acquisitions-statistics/
MLA: Axis Intelligence Research and Mia Scarlett. “M&A Statistics 2026.” Axis Intelligence, 10 Aug. 2026, axis-intelligence.com/mergers-and-acquisitions-statistics/.
Chicago: Axis Intelligence Research and Mia Scarlett. “M&A Statistics 2026.” Axis Intelligence, August 10, 2026. https://axis-intelligence.com/mergers-and-acquisitions-statistics/
To cite the index: “Axis Intelligence Research, Merger Friction Index (MFI), fiscal year 2025 reading 35.1, August 10, 2026, CC BY 4.0.”
Frequently Asked Questions
What counts as a “megadeal” in M&A statistics, and why does the threshold matter?
The $10 billion line is the convention LSEG and the U.S. antitrust agencies both use, though for different reasons — LSEG for reporting, the FTC and DOJ as the top band of the HSR size table. It matters because that band behaves nothing like the rest of the market: in fiscal 2025 it held 1.0% of U.S. filings but drew a 52.6% clearance rate and a 21.1% second-request rate. When a dataset changes its megadeal threshold, the concentration statistics move sharply. Check the threshold before comparing two sources.
Does a second request mean a deal is likely to be blocked?
No. A second request is a demand for additional documents inside the statutory waiting period, and most transactions receiving one eventually close, often with a divestiture. In fiscal 2025 the agencies issued 41 second requests and took 18 merger enforcement actions, and several of those actions were restructurings rather than challenges. What a second request reliably signals is cost and calendar: months of production and a materially longer path to closing.
Why do global M&A totals differ between LSEG, S&P Global, Dealogic and Mergermarket?
Because the providers apply different inclusion rules — on announcement versus completion date, on minority stakes and joint ventures, on withdrawn deals, on rumoured transactions, and on currency conversion dates. Differences of several hundred billion dollars in an annual global total are normal. For any time-series comparison, hold the provider constant; mixing providers across years produces artefacts that look like trends.
Is the drop in the Merger Friction Index the same as the U.S. agencies bringing fewer cases?
They are related but distinct. Enforcement actions fell from 32 in fiscal 2024 to 18 in fiscal 2025, while the MFI measures the friction encountered during review rather than the number of challenges brought. The index moved principally because the over-$10B second-request rate more than halved and because early termination was granted 265 times after being granted three times the prior year. A deal team feels those two changes in its timetable regardless of how many complaints are ultimately filed.
Why did the European Commission prohibit no mergers in 2024 or 2025?
Outright prohibitions have always been rare — 33 across 10,028 notifications since 1990. Concerns are typically resolved earlier: through Phase I commitments, of which the Commission accepted nine in 2025, or by parties withdrawing before a decision, which happened five times. Zero prohibitions in a year is a statement about where cases resolve, not about whether they were scrutinised.
What does the simplified-procedure share tell buyers planning a European filing?
That roughly nine in ten notified concentrations are cleared on a short-form basis — 90.5% of 2025 Phase I compatibility decisions and 89.7% through May 2026. For a transaction with no overlapping activities, the practical planning assumption is the simplified track. The tail risk sits with the small share of cases that fall out of it, where a Phase II clock of 90 working days applies before extensions.
Does record deal value mean the M&A market is healthy?
Not on its own. Value reached a record in H1 2026 on a six-year low in deal count, with 46.4% of value in 0.196% of transactions. Aggregate value is a measure of the largest transactions announced; deal count is a better measure of market breadth. In the first half of 2026 the two diverged sharply, and the average transaction outside the megadeal band was worth $62.6 million.
Why is private-equity activity falling while corporate M&A rises?
Sponsors face a different constraint. Roughly 33,000 portfolio companies are awaiting exit on an implied holding period near seven years, which absorbs capacity that would otherwise fund new acquisitions, and Bain’s deal-cost measure combining purchase multiples with financing costs sits near record highs. Corporate acquirers pursuing strategic or AI-infrastructure assets are not solving the same equation, which is why technology led sector value at $649 billion in the same period that private-equity technology deal value fell 70% quarter over quarter.
How often is the Merger Friction Index updated?
Annually, following publication of the Hart-Scott-Rodino Annual Report — the fiscal 2025 report was released July 2, 2026. The formula, weights and component sources are published above so the reading can be independently recomputed from the agencies’ documents. If a component ceases to be reported, the change and its treatment will be disclosed rather than applied silently.