The global deal landscape witnessed a substantial decline in the first ten months of 2023, with a total of 44,602 deals, including mergers and acquisitions (M&A), private equity, and venture financings, as reported by GlobalData, a data and analytics company. This represents a notable 23.8% year-on-year decline from the 58,540 deals recorded during the same period in 2022.
A detailed examination of GlobalData's Financial Deals Database highlights a broad decline in volume across all covered deal types during January-October 2023.
Venture funding deals took a significant hit, plummeting by 32.1% compared to the same period in 2022. Similarly, the volume of private equity deals and M&A deals declined by 29% and 16.8%, respectively, year-on-year.
Offering insights, Aurojyoti Bose, Lead Analyst at GlobalData, said, "Ongoing geopolitical tensions, coupled with related macroeconomic challenges and uncertain business conditions, appear to be playing a pivotal role in influencing deal-making sentiment. We are seeing potential impacts on deal activity across different regions and key markets."
In North America, for example, the number of deals announced in the first 10 months of 2023 declined significantly by 28.2 percent compared to the same period last year. In line with this trend, Europe, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, Africa, South America, and Central America also experienced year-over-year declines of 19.8%, 19.5%, 26.5%, and 29.8%, respectively, during the same period.
At the same time, several key markets experienced a decline in deal activity. Specifically, the U.S., China, the U.K., Canada, India, Japan, Germany, Australia, France, and South Korea saw deal volumes decline by 30.1%, 13.3%, 15.1%, 9.8%, 26.1%, 17.3%, 20.4%, 22.3%, 17.8%, and 29.5%, respectively, in January-October 2023 compared to the same period in 2022.
