October 13 2026 | Europe | Mergers & Acquisitions | Deals | Due diligence and dealmaking
EMEA dealmaking has stopped moving in one direction. According to Datasite’s Deal Drivers: EMEA HY 2026 report, in the first half of 2026 the market produced 9,445 announced deals worth €783bn. Volume fell 10% year on year. Value rose 51.8%. Private equity followed the same shape: 1,564 buyouts worth €165bn, volume down 10.1%, value up 25.4%.
That is the strongest half for aggregate value on record, and it happened while fewer deals got done.The two lines have separated. Volume is going down. Value is going up. That is the scissors.
Why did EMEA deal value rise while deal volume fell?
Capital concentrated rather than left. Fewer transactions absorbed far more money. Just eight deals above €5bn accounted for €97.4bn of disclosed value in six months. That single band beat the full-year totals for both 2025 (€88.7bn) and 2024 (€64.9bn). At the other end, the €5m to €250m band delivered €33.6bn across 654 deals.
The macro backdrop explains why buyers got choosier. In June 2026 the ECB raised its deposit rate to 2.25% , its first increase since 2023, after energy prices pushed eurozone inflation to 3.2% in May . At the same meeting it cut its 2026 growth forecast to 0.8% .
Financing got more expensive just as the growth outlook weakened. Buyers responded by making fewer, bigger bets on the assets they were most confident in. The well-capitalised strategic buyers, who rely least on cheap debt, carried the value. The tightening hasn't finished. The ECB raised rates again in September, to 2.50%, and Nomura expects a terminal rate of 3% by March 2027.
Which deals drove the record?
The ten largest EMEA deals of the half were worth about €228bn combined. That is roughly 29% of the half's total value from ten transactions. The biggest include:
- McCormick's €37.1bn combination with Unilever's foods business
- Intesa Sanpaolo's €30.6bn bid for Monte dei Paschi
- Kone's €29.4bn acquisition of TK Elevator from Advent and Cinven
- UniCredit's €25.7bn offer for Commerzbank
- Poste Italiane's €21.4bn bid for TIM
- The €20.4bn carve-up of SFR between Orange, Bouygues Telecom and Iliad's Free
What happened to private equity?
According to the report, PE followed a similar pattern. EMEA recorded 1,564 buyouts worth €165bn in H1. Q2 produced 711 buyouts, which the report describes as the lowest quarterly total in years. Mean deal size rose 41% to €111m.
The report points to a valuation stand-off.European corporates continue to trade at a steep discount to US peers, while private-market sellers have been reluctant to accept materially lower prices than they had expected. Long holding periods and an exit backlog are also weighing on distributions to LPs. In the report's view, the need to return capital may eventually push both sides towards more realistic pricing.
The picture varies by sector. Real estate recorded just 20 buyouts in H1, with value down 49.7%, and suggests higher rates have made leveraged deals harder to make work. In industrials and chemicals, buyout volume was broadly flat but value rose 26.6%. The report links this to sponsor interest in businesses exposed to long-term spending on electrification, automation and AI infrastructure.
What does a concentrated market mean for the mid-market?
The supply is there. The buyer attention is thinner.Deals between €5m and €250m produced €33.6bn of disclosed value in H1. The report notes a pent-up supply of mid-market companies sitting in fund portfolios, and says advisors expect buyer capital to stay focused on a small group of "must-have" targets.
For sellers, this may be the sharpest edge of the scissors.
The report doesn't suggest buyers have gone away, but it does point to them becoming more selective.
Where will the next wave of sellers come from?
Mergermarket tracked 2,726 companies for sale across EMEA in H1. The UK and Ireland (547) and DACH (519) lead by region, and industrials and chemicals (459), TMT (458) and consumer (425) lead by sector.
DACH industrials stand out in the data. The region accounts for 139 of the sector's 459 for-sale stories, more than Italy and the UK and Ireland combined. The report describes significant pressure on Germany's industrial economy:
- Production is around 12% below pre-pandemic levels Volkswagen, Bosch and ThyssenKrupp are pursuing around 80,000 job cuts between them
- Germany recorded 4,996 business insolvencies in Q2, the highest quarterly total in more than two decades.
The report identifies three tracks emerging from this:
- distressed assets attracting turnaround investors
- carve-outs from restructuring corporates
- specialist businesses drawing interest from foreign strategic buyers
Consumer has a pipeline of it own. Unilever and Nestlé are divesting non-core lines and Barry Callebaut is preparing a cocoa spin-off . The bigger question may be buyer appetite rather than supply.
What should sellers do differently?
When buyers are selective, readiness matters more.. With more options and higher financing costs, buyers are likely to focus their diligence time on processes that are well prepared.
In practice, that could mean starting the preparation work earlier:
- Prepare your virtual data room before the process starts. Assembling documents after launch can slow momentum at the point buyers are deciding where to focus.
- Anticipate the hard questions. With rates rising and a softer growth outlook, buyers may test forecasts, energy exposure and financing assumptions more closely than they did a year ago.
- Plan for separation early if you're carving out. Standalone financials, transitional service arrangements and contract assignments are often where carve-outs slow down.
- Keep the gap between interest and confirmatory diligence short. When buyer attention is scarce, momentum can be part of an asset's value.
What should dealmakers watch for the rest of 2026?
Interest rates are likely to remain a key variable. The ECB raised rates again in September, taking the deposit rate to 2.50%, and Nomura economists expect a terminal rate of 3% by March 2027. Renewed tension in the Strait of Hormuz in July suggests energy-driven inflation may take time to ease.
The contested deals are also worth watching. UniCredit now holds 47.59% of Commerzbank following its tender offer, although the transfer of tendered shares still needs regulatory approval and both Commerzbank and the German government remain opposed. In France, the €20.4bn carve-up of SFR is being reviewed by the French competition authority after Brussels referred part of it, and completion isn't expected before the second half of 2027. Between them, these deals may give an early read on how far Europe's more open stance on consolidation goes in practice.
The scissors may take a while to close. If financing stays expensive and price expectations hold, EMEA could keep producing fewer, larger deals, and preparation is likely to play a part in which assets find buyers.
