A total of 6,705 deals (comprising mergers & acquisitions (M&A), private equity, and venture financing deals) were announced globally during January-February 2024, which is a decline of 29.2% compared to the announcement of 9,465 deals during the first two months of the previous year, according to GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

An analysis of GlobalData’s Deals Database also revealed that all the deal types under coverage witnessed a year-on-year (YoY) decline in volume during January-February 2024. The number of M&A deals declined by 23.8% during January-February 2024 compared to January-February 2023, whereas the volume of private equity deals and venture financing deals fell by 36.1% and 36.5% YoY, respectively.

Aurojyoti Bose, Lead Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “This year so far seems to be no different from the previous year as deal activity continues to remain sluggish. Deal activity shrank in 2023 compared to 2022, and the declining trend has been continuing in 2024 as well. All the regions and most of the key markets also followed the same trend.”

North America, which continues to top the chart in terms of deal volume, registered a 34.4% YoY decline in the total number of deals announced in the region during January-February 2024 compared to the same period a year earlier.

Similarly, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa, and South and Central America regions recorded YoY decline in deal volume by 28.6%, 19.6%, 33.1% and 43.3% during January-February 2024, respectively.

Meanwhile, the US, the UK, China, India, Canada, Japan, Germany, Australia, South Korea, and France witnessed YoY decline in deal volume by 33.8%, 21.4%, 23%, 12.9%, 37.9%, 23.5%, 30.9%, 3.2%, 12.2%, and 47% during the first two months of 2024, respectively.