Deals review 2025/2026

So you can see some of the transactions by a sector. You can see in terms of multiples, the client’s experience, those who have been through transactions to really hear what it’s like from their perspective.

So in terms of staffing, we’ve recruited across all grades in the current year. We’ve taken people from big four, from mid-tier, but it’s been fantastic news.

We’ve had three internal promotions to partnership across a range of specialisms in terms of our due diligence transaction sport and in terms of M&A.

So every year we do a review of the deals in our region and nationally, enables us to see the trends, what’s emerging and the type of transactions people are undertaking.

For the fourth year in a row, we’ve undertaken more transactions than any other firm in the region we operate in.

So in terms of looking back at 2025, whilst many people in the market found it a challenging year, we were quite fortunate because of the range of sectors we operate in – our energy, TMT in particular were very active.

And whilst the number of entrepreneurs weren’t necessarily looking to exit, it was a great year for raising finance.

So our debt advisory team and also in terms of private equity, resulted in a number of transactions enabling entrepreneurs to be prepared for the future.

So in terms of multiples, I think it’s fair to say that divergence has continued, with a lot of money available for well-performing businesses in attractive sectors, and so the multiples there have continued to increase.

There’s been quite a few standout transactions and outcomes for clients this year, but I think there’s one that stands out in my mind.

And that was where a client had been approached by a private equity group. We looked at the business’s underlying performance and it was a growing business, so we could project out the increase in performance and profitability and really demonstrate to the buyer that it was worth more than their offer and that was able to negotiate the deal up by about 50%.

So huge added value to a client.

We’ve really worked on some quite complex deals over the last 12 months. It’s been very pleasing to see the number of deals we’ve done in the market, which other people are describing as fairly tough. Our view is there is probably pent up demand.

So going into 26, there’s people who just will want to do transactions. Importantly, the fundamentals for transactions are there.

So corporates are well capitalised, private equity’s got lots of money. And we’re seeing an increased impact of private equity into the markets in terms of the number of deals they do specifically in the South. And I think that’s going to really drive deals.

There’s so many more options for clients to unlock wealth or investment. And so our sort of tool set has to be much bigger. And as a result, we’ve got more people around us with specialisms, and being able to unlock that for our clients is really exciting.

So corporate finance market is quite exciting at the moment. It has been a challenging market, but actually what does that mean? There’s a lot of latent transactions. There’s a lot of shareholders and business owners that are interested in looking at transactions and opportunities.

There’s sort of a lot of activity in the market, a lot of funding available, and then obviously with technology coming in and unlocking sort of how we’re working with businesses, how we’re finding buyers, people being able to demonstrate more in terms of data is sort of making the market shift and the dynamics within that are changing.

I think one of the differentiates we have as a team here, is the individuals really care about what they do. They like building a great relationship with clients and helping them to achieve what they’re really wanting to do.

And that’s why I’m very grateful for the team’s expertise, the advice we’ve given to clients, making this the fifth year in a row that we’ve had a record performance.