M&A deals likely to surge in FY26 amid market volatility

Corporate cash reserves to fuel dealmaking, led by infrastructure, healthcare, energy sectors

- Anirudh Laskar & Neha Joshi

Mergers and acquisitions in India will likely see a surge in volumes in FY26 because of a volatile equity market and strong corporate balance sheets, said investment bankers and dealmakers at the Mint India Investment Summit. M&A activity in 2024 fell to a four-year low in terms of deal value to $80.5 billion, down 11.4% from the year before, show data from LSEG Deals Intelligence. Last year, however, was India's busiest dealmaking year with 2,756 deals announced.

"If you are talking about M&As, in the last two years, volumes were down. That was offset by robust equity market volumes," said Arun Saigal, managing director and head of financing and M&A, Barclays India. "If you were to ask me going forward for the next 12-18 months, we would expect M&A volumes to be up because equity markets are clearly a little more volatile."