A total of 19,642 deals comprising mergers & acquisitions (M&A), private equity, and venture financing were announced globally during January-May 2024, which is a decline of 19.6% compared to the announcement of 24,441 deals announced during January-May 2023, according to GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

An analysis of GlobalData’s Deals Database showed that all the deal types under coverage registered year-on-year (YoY) decline during January-May 2024. For instance, the number of M&A deals declined by 13.9% during the first five months of 2024 compared to January-May 2023, while the volume of private equity and venture financing deals was down by 23.1% and 27.8%, respectively.

Aurojyoti Bose, Lead Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “Global deal activity declined substantially during the first five months of the year amid prevailing geopolitical tensions, ongoing wars, and macroeconomic challenges. These factors seem to have impacted deal-making sentiments across all regions globally.”

Deal volume for North America declined by 25.6% during January-May 2024 compared to January-May 2023 while Europe, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa, and the South and Central America regions saw respective deals volume decline YoY by 20.1%, 9.9%, 14.8%, and 30.7%.

Bose adds: “These declines could be attributed to the fact that most of the markets within these regions experienced subdued deal activity during the review period.”

Some of the notable countries witnessing YoY decline included the US, the UK, China, Canada, Germany, Australia, France, the Netherlands, Italy, and Spain, which saw deal volume fall by 24.3%, 14%, 18.3%, 35.6%, 21.8%, 8.8%, 37.5%, 19.8%, 17.9% and 27.6% during January-May 2024 compared to January-May 2023, respectively.