Investment bankers say Trump mergers and acquisitions boom already underway

President-elect Trump doesn’t officially take office for another week, but investment bankers say a boom in Trump-related deal-making is already underway—transactional activity that was stymied by the regulation-heavy Biden administration is poised to explode.

This was the conclusion of a panel of investment bankers and private equity executives who discussed the return of corporate deal-making at the Frontiers of Digital Finance Conference in Miami on Tuesday.

“We’ll have more deals coming to market in 2025 than we’ve had in the last two years,” said Jeffrey Levine, Managing Director at investment banking giant Houlihan Lokey, who spoke on the panel. “More capital has been raised in the last three years than in the history of private equity, but it hasn’t been deployed.” 

The conference, sponsored by a private lending company called Biz2X, which provides online lending solutions to small businesses, featured some major players in finance and the intersection of finance and politics. Patrick McHenry, the former North Carolina Congressman and Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, stated in a keynote speech that Trump’s victory, combined with Republicans maintaining House leadership and gaining a majority in the Senate, will usher in a new era of deregulation that will encourage capital formation.

HOW COULD THE INCOMING TRUMP ADMIN IMPACT THE M&A MARKET?

Representative Patrick McHenry, a Republican of North Carolina and ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee, speaks during a hearing in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Thursday, June 23, 2022. Federal Reserve chair gave his most explicit a (Photographer: Eric Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)

“Washington is open, and the United States economy is open, McHenry said. “The era of post-financial crisis regulation, lawmaking, and politics is dead and gone.”

During a panel discussion on mergers and acquisitions, David MacGown, Managing Director of Barclays’ Financial Institutions Group, noted that he is seeing a surge in deal appetite, anticipating a lighter regulatory approach from the incoming Trump administration’s Federal Trade Commission, Federal Communications Commission, and the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division.

Biden appointees leading those three agencies have halted almost all M&A activity in recent years; those who chose to defy the regulatory restrictions have faced prolonged legal battles with the Biden deal police.

That said, Trump isn’t expected to provide carte blanche for all deal-making. His regulators are still skeptical about the power of Big Tech and may view Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and other tech giants with suspicion as they continue to grow in size.

LESS REGULATION POWERING US STOCKS AHEAD, SAYS BNY WEALTH CIO

Once Trump finalizes leadership…