As the year draws to a close, dealmakers across Wall Street, Canary Wharf, and Hong Kong are doing what they do best: working through the holidays.
December alone has already seen $463.6 billion in announced M&A, up 30% year-on-year, capped by a fierce bidding war between Paramount Skydance and Netflix for Warner Bros Discovery.
This is not an isolated frenzy. It reflects a deeper structural shift:
- Boards are no longer waiting for perfect conditions
- CEOs are prioritising scale, certainty, and strategic control
- Capital markets are open, valuations are defensible, and regulatory tolerance has widened
As one senior banker put it: “We’ve moved from finding reasons to say no — to finding reasons to say yes.”
The Warner Bros situation is particularly instructive:
- Competing bids exceeding $100 billion
- Advisors, PR teams, and financiers on-call through Christmas
- Deadlines stretching into January 2026
- Financing certainty, governance structure, and regulatory survivability now outweighing headline price
But beyond media, activity is broad-based:
- Tech and data infrastructure
- Sponsor-led take-privates
- Cross-border consolidation
- Pre-positioning deals for early 2026 execution
Global M&A has now surpassed $4.8 trillion, making 2025 the second-strongest year on record, trailing only the 2021 stimulus-driven peak.
For deal professionals, this is a reminder:
These windows don’t stay open forever.
And for corporates and sponsors still “thinking about next year” — the market has already moved on.