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Forget summer Fridays.
The notion of “summer lull” has been gone from Wall Street since the pandemic, said Anu Aiyengar, global head of advisory and M&A at JPMorgan Chase. And it’s never been more true than now: M&A activity has been rebounding even amid fears that Trump’s trade wars could slow the economy.
“The last week of May and June and early July have all been pretty active with a good cadence of deal announcements,” Aiyengar told Business Insider. “And more importantly, our pipeline and conversations continue to be active as well.”
The bank on Wednesday released a report showing that M&A in the first half of the year hit its highest levels since 2022, driven largely by large deals. Here are four of the top trends keeping bankers busy as we head into a not-so-sleepy August:
Bigger is better
JPMorgan said total deal volume soared 27% to $2.2 trillion in the first half of 2025, including a 57% increase in deals over $10 billion.
Deals over $1 billion rose 72% — a 20-year high, the bank said.
Sector by sector
The bank said 7 out of 9 sectors saw double-digit volume growth, including:
Financial institutions (+56%)
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Media & communications (+51%)
Diversified Industries (+41%)
M&A volumes seemed to favor technology (23%) and diversified industries (22%), the bank said.
JPMorgan
Private equity dealmaking
Private equity firms, known in M&A parlance as financial sponsors, have ramped up dealmaking, leading to $168 billion in take-private deals in the first half of 2025, the highest levels since 2022, the bank said.
Four mega-deals accounted for more than 50% of that volume—indicating a highly concentrated but aggressive deployment of capital.
Minority stakes
Sponsors increased their minority stake transactions, especially in high-growth sectors. Sponsor-led minority deals rose 34% year-over-year and were 9% above the 10-year average of $81 billion.
A substantial share—35% of these deals—were in technology, driven by investments in AI, compute infrastructure, and data center capabilities.
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