A total of 15,561 deals (mergers & acquisitions (M&A), private equity and venture financing deals) were announced globally during January-April 2024. This is a year-on-year (YoY) decline of 19.5% compared to the 19,321 deals announced during January-April 2023, according to GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

An analysis of GlobalData’s Deals Database shows that all the deal types under the coverage witnessed YoY decline in volume during January-April 2024. The number of M&A deals declined by 13.7%, whereas private equity and venture financing deals volume were down by 19.3% and 27.9%, respectively.

Aurojyoti Bose, Lead Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “The decline is driven by a dent in deal-making sentiment, which is felt across regions. In fact, all regions experienced fall in deals volume during January-April 2024 compared to January-April 2023.”

For instance, the number of deals announced in North America fell by 26.1% while deals volume for Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa and South and Central America regions declined by 19.9%, 9.3%, 11.3%, and 29.3%, respectively.

Bose adds: “Most of the key markets across these regions experienced subdued deal activity during the review period, which resulted in the overall decline.”

The US and China, which are the top two markets globally in terms of deal volume, registered YoY decline of 25% and 15.8% during January-April 2024, respectively. Similarly, other key markets such as the UK, Japan, Canada, Germany, Australia and France saw respective deals volume fall by 14.9%, 1.2%, 34.9%, 20%, 7.9%, and 37% during January-April 2024 compared to the same period in previous year.