Welcome to a new year of Horizons and a first issue that looks back over the full 2021. After four continuous quarters of really strong deal activity, mid-market global deal-making took a slight dip in the final months of 2021, perhaps a well deserved respite for practitioners. Judging by activity levels and capital deployed, 2021 was a year of huge recovery on COVID-impacted 2020 and well up on pre-pandemic 2019.
As a global organisation with operations in most countries, our teams have worked on over 2,000 M&A transactions in the past year and are able to tell us about this recovery in different sectors and regions. This issue brings you up to date commentary on deal activity levels and a special feature on the relevance of ESG in the world of M&A. We zoom in on TMT, Industrials and Logistics & Supply Management and, as always, we have a plethora of heat charts showing potential M&A activity in the next few months.
- Global view: Deal activity slows down in final quarter but 2021 remains a stand-out year
- Special feature: ESG comes of age in M&A
- Industrials: Future looks bright for Industrials & Chemicals M&A
- TMT: Strong TMT deal momentum looks set to continue in 2022
- Logistics & Supply Chain: M&A bounces back in record breaking year.