The aggregate value of worldwide announced financials sector M&A jumped 38% year-on-year in 2025 to $595 billion, while the number of announced deals rose by a more modest 6% to 5,423, according to LSEG data. The gap between those two figures is the story of the year.
It is explained by the largest transactions. Deals worth $1 billion or more rose 49% to 107 and accounted for $438 billion of aggregate value, a 51% increase on 2024. Between them, they made up 74% of all deal value in 2025, against 67% the year before.
North America remained the largest single market, with 1,611 deals announced worth $212 billion. But its 2.9% year-on-year growth was the weakest among the major regions. Europe’s aggregate deal value rose 97.8% to $155 billion and Asia-Pacific’s rose 75.2% to $201 billion. Latin America fell 25% to $17 billion, while the Middle East and Africa edged up 4% to $9 billion.
The deals that defined 2025
The largest financials deal of the year came in April, when Global Payments signed a definitive agreement with the private equity firm GTCR to acquire the payment processor Worldpay for $24.3 billion. The transaction was aimed squarely at the economics of moving money across borders, with implications for cross-border payments and transaction speed.
In the same month, FIS agreed to buy Global Payments’ issuer solutions business for $13.5 billion – a reshuffling of the payments stack in which each party bought depth in one layer and sold it in another.
China accounted for three of the year’s five largest deals, a marker of the country’s growing weight in worldwide financials M&A. Among them was the second largest transaction of 2025: in March, the state-owned Ministry of Finance acquired an 8.6% stake in Bank of China Ltd, a Beijing-based commercial bank, for a total value of $22.7 billion.
The third largest was a piece of domestic banking consolidation. In January, Italy’s Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena (BMPS) launched a hostile bid for its domestic rival Mediobanca in a stock swap transaction, eventually succeeding with a sweetened offer worth $17 billion. The objective was a new national champion in Italian banking, combining BMPS in retail and commercial banking with Mediobanca in wealth management, corporate and investment banking and consumer finance. It is a useful corrective to the assumption that every large financials deal is now a technology story.
Insurtech and the technology bid
Insurtech deal value reached $28.5 billion in 2025, the highest level recorded across the 2021–2025 period. Technology-related investment stayed concentrated around two themes: insurance-related AI deal value reached $5.9 billion, while digitalization-related deal value totalled $5.6 billion, according to GlobalData. Insurers are prioritising technologies capable of improving automation, underwriting, claims efficiency and operational scalability – which between them are the levers that move a combined ratio.
The competitive pressure behind that spending is now explicit. In Q1 2026, 32.1% of respondents to a GlobalData survey identified insurtech startups as the most significant source of competitive pressure for established insurers over the next one to two years, citing disruption across underwriting, claims, pricing, customer engagement and digital distribution.
Financial sponsors crowded out
Private equity’s share of worldwide financials M&A declined for a third consecutive year: 24% of buy-side deal announcements in 2025 originated from financial sponsors, against an all-time high of 33% in 2022. The largest was the United Arab Emirates’ Mubadala Capital, which invested $10 billion in the US-based investment holding company TWG Global. Insurance remains the sponsors’ preferred hunting ground – three of the five largest PE-led acquisitions of 2025 were for targets in the insurance subsector.
Notable deals in H1 2026
The mega-deal theme has carried into 2026, with 42 transactions worth at least $1 billion announced in the first half. Three of the five largest were for European targets, with the remaining two in the US.
The largest was Intesa Sanpaolo’s unsolicited $35 billion cash-and-share bid in June for BMPS, which is itself still digesting the Mediobanca acquisition. To assuage antitrust concerns, Intesa has entered a side agreement with the Italian insurer Unipol Assicurazioni, which has agreed to buy the BMPS brand, around 635 branches and the majority of its activities for EUR 3–3.5 billion in cash. Intesa would retain Mediobanca and some of BMPS’ central structures. The stated aim is to become a leader in wealth management – “the Italian UBS” – while also seeking a leadership position in corporate and investment banking.
In the US, Corebridge Financial and Equitable Holdings agreed in March to combine in an all-stock merger, valuing the combined retirement, life, wealth and asset management group at approximately $22 billion, with around $1.5 trillion in assets under management and administration. The transaction is expected to close by the end of 2026.
Insurance produced another of the half’s largest transactions. Also in March, Zurich Insurance Group agreed an all-cash offer for the UK specialty insurer Beazley in a deal worth roughly $11 billion, creating a business with approximately $15 billion of specialty gross written premiums on a pro forma basis. Completion is expected in the second half of 2026.
Discover further insights
To learn more, download The future of financial services: strategic intelligence for investors and M&A dealmakers, published in association with Sterling Technology – the provider of premium virtual data room solutions for secure sharing of content and collaboration for the investment banking, private equity, corporate development, capital markets and legal communities engaged in financials M&A dealmaking and capital raising.
