The profile of M&A in 2026

Cathal Deasy:
Andrew, it’s absolutely terrific to be here.

I’m looking forward to hearing your views as you reflect in ‘25.

But more importantly, really what the trends you’re expecting to see in 2026. Particularly as we come off what is the second strongest year for M&A.

Let’s start with AI. I’d love to get your thoughts on AI and how that’s been affecting the M&A market.

Andrew Woeber:
AI drove significant transactions across the broader economic system.

It drove transactions in software such as IBM’s recent announced acquisition of Confluent, which we advised on.

It drove transactions in industrials that’s providing equipment and services into the AI companies, into the data centres.

Real estate with data centre builds and even down to basic materials where the very copper and steel that goes into the equipment and data centres has driven both significant demand but also significant M&A.

Cathal Deasy:
Yeah, I couldn’t agree with you more.

I think, look, the picks and shovels associated with the whole AI value chain is seeing strategic activity as you referenced.

Andrew Woeber:
I’m interested, Cathal, in your perspectives on what you’re seeing from sponsors because I know you talk to a lot of our sponsor clients.

Cathal Deasy:
Look, I think to the degree of frustration over the last couple of years from the financial sponsor side and their ability to monetise assets and in particular the IPO market not opening.

That’s now wide open and we’ve seen that in a number of large IPOs this year.

I think that allows them to return capital to their investors. Increased the DPI ratio, which is very important to their LPs. And that allows them to fundraise and then create that flywheel for them to deploy capital.

So I’m actually quite optimistic that that was saying that we had a 30% growth in financial sponsor M&A through the course of ‘25.

We’ll have another growth in that volume as we go into 2026. And I suspect it’s going to be broad based across all industries.

You obviously spent a lot of time with the boards of our clients. What is top of mind for the boards and CEOs of our clients and how do you think that’s going to influence activity as we go into 2026?

Andrew Woeber:
CEOs and boards fully recognise now that they can’t wait for perfect conditions to achieve their long term strategic objectives.

So they’re acting decisively now on both buying businesses that position them for where they want to be in 5 to 10 years and also divesting assets that are no longer core to their strategy.

The other driver of corporate activity is cross-border deals.

We saw a lot of activity by Japan buying into the US Europe buying into the US and that’s what we really saw in 2025 and we’re seeing in our pipeline into 2026.

Cathal Deasy:
So with that Andrew, look it sounds like we’re both sharing optimism for 2026 in terms of the volume for M&A. And I think you know, I’m very optimistic for Barclays in what’s going to be a very buoyant M&A market for all the reasons we discussed going into 2026.