Record M&A value is hiding a thinner deal count

The headlines say M&A is back. They're half right.

Announced global deal value reached $2.8 trillion in the first half of 2026, up 48% and the highest since LSEG records began in 1980, according to Reuters reporting on LSEG data. The same data shows roughly 24,000 deals, down 9% and a six-year low. Forty-seven megadeals over $10 billion made up nearly half the value.

So the dollars are up and the number of transactions is down. If you run a sell-side practice or a corporate development team that lives in the $20 million to $500 million range, the second number is the one that pays your bills.

What the numbers look like by market

• United States. Deals for US targets hit $1.5 trillion in the first half, up 80% year on year, per LSEG figures reported by The Global Legal Post. Most of that lift came from the very top of the market.
• Canada. Kroll counted 708 Canadian companies sold in the first half, up just 2.3%, while disclosed value jumped 60.9% to CA$91.4 billion. Same story: value racing ahead of volume.
• United Kingdom. The Office for National Statistics recorded 353 completed deals involving UK companies in Q2 2026, down from 407 in Q1. Domestic deals fell to 130, against 241 a year earlier, even as a few billion-pound inbound deals lifted the value line.

One senior banker in the Reuters piece described "lesser momentum at the lower end." That is a polite way of saying the mid-market is crowded and thin at the same time.

Meanwhile, the pipeline of future sellers is real. Bain's latest survey found more than half of companies are preparing assets for sale within the next few years. The deals are coming. The question is who will be in the room when owners decide.

The banker's book is the last stop

Think about how the best houses in a good neighborhood sell. Many trade before the sign ever goes in the yard. The agent who knew the owners were downsizing gets the listing, and the buyer who had already called gets the first look. By the time a house hits the public listings, the price is set by competition.

M&A works the same way. When a teaser lands in your inbox, the seller has picked an advisor, the process has a timetable, and you are one of forty parties invited to bid. That can still work. But it is the most expensive way to buy a company and the least predictable way to win a mandate.

Acquirers who consistently find proprietary or lightly contested deals tend to do a few things differently:

• They pick a thesis and a short list. Sixty named companies in two or three niches. "Industrial services, $5M+ EBITDA" is a filter, and owners can tell when they are on one.
• They track triggers. Founder age and succession, a PE hold period running past five years, a debt maturity, a new CFO, a carve-out signal from a parent.
• They show up early and often. Owners sell to people they already know. A first meeting 18 months before a process beats a perfect LOI in round two.

What this means if you need mandates

Sell-side advisors face the same arithmetic from the other side. Fewer completed deals means fewer mandates to go around, and the beauty parade is usually decided before the pitch book is printed. The owner invites three firms. They already lean toward the one whose partner has been useful to them for a year.

Buy-side advisors and independent sponsors have it harder still. Their value to a client is access, and access is the one thing a crowded auction does not provide.

In most advisory firms, origination still runs on partner networks, referrals from lawyers and accountants, and the occasional conference. Those channels work. They are also lumpy, hard to scale, and tied to a handful of people. When a rainmaker retires or a referral source goes quiet, the pipeline goes quiet too.

The firms that win mandates in a thin market treat origination like a pipeline, with a named list, a reason to call each owner, and a steady presence in front of those owners long before they are ready to talk. That presence is part content, part targeted visibility, part a real conversation from someone who understands their sector and their multiple. None of it is a mass email to every founder with a pulse.

An exercise for this week

Write down the last ten mandates or deals your firm closed. For each one, mark how it started: banker's book, referral, or a relationship you built before the owner was ready.

Then look at your current pipeline the same way. If most of it depends on someone else running a process, you are waiting in line. Pick the 25 owners you most want to be talking to in 2027 and ask a blunt question: do they know who you are yet?