A total of 3,348 deals (comprising mergers & acquisitions (M&A), private equity, and venture financing deals) were announced globally during January 2024, which was a decline of 34.1% compared to the announcement of 5,083 deals during January 2023, according to GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

An analysis of GlobalData’s Deals Database reveals that all the deal types under coverage saw a decline in volume during January 2024 compared to the same period during the previous year.

The number of M&A deals fell by 29.2% in January 2024 compared to January 2023, while private equity and venture financing deal volumes were down by 45% and 40.6%, respectively.

Aurojyoti Bose, Lead Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “Following the 2023 trend of declining deals activity, subdued deal-making sentiments also continued to prevail in 2024, with the first month of the year seeing a decline. In fact, all the regions and several key markets globally experienced a fall in deals volume.”

North America witnessed a decline in deal volume by 38.4% in January 2024 compared to January 2023. Similarly, Europe, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa, and South and Central America recorded year-on-year declines of 35.8%, 23.8%, 33%, and 52% in January 2024, respectively.

Meanwhile, the US and China, which are the top two markets in terms of deal volume, registered a decline in the number of deals by 38.8% and 20.9% in January 2024 compared to January 2023, respectively.

Other key markets such as the UK, India, Canada, Japan, Germany, South Korea, Australia and France saw respective deal volume falling by 27.7%, 33.9%, 33.8%, 25.5%, 40.8%, 16.7%, 6.8%, and 55.9% in January 2024 compared to the same period during the previous year.