M&A value nearly halves as ticket sizes shrink but dealcount remains intact

The 1H bloodbath is starting to make itself visible. Regional M&A value nearly halved y-o-y, but the numbers hide as much as they show. There are some pockets (ahem, Saudi Arabia and the UAE) where the dealmaking machine has hardly hit a snag, and the transactions that made it through during the first six months of the year are as big as ever.

The 47% y-o-y drop in 1H 2026 regional M&A value to USD 48.7 bn is still steep, but it’s a lighter drop than we saw in 1Q, Zawya reports, citing LSEG data. Dealcount barely moved, down just 2% y-o-y to 642, which means the average deal shrank hard: c. USD 76 mn this year against an implied c. USD 140 mn in 1H 2025.

Why it matters: A near-halving in value against a flat dealcount is less of a frozen market and more an indication that caution about size and risk is factoring in more heavily. For dealmakers, that argues for structuring around smaller, more contained bets rather than waiting out the volatility for big-ticket ones.

The UAE ran the table, with other leaders trailing behind. It was the region’s most in-demand market by a wide margin — USD 16.5 bn in M&A activity, ahead of Saudi Arabia (USD 2.9 bn) and Morocco (USD 1 bn).

Outbound held up better than inbound: MENA investors put USD 25 bn to work abroad (still down 38% y-o-y), while deals targeting the region hit a two-year low for 1H, off 56% amid persistent instability.

Paramount’s L’imad-backed USD 110 bn Warner Bros. Discovery buyout cleared Brussels this week, but it’s clearing regulators faster than it’s clearing courts. The European Commission signed off on the acquisition, conditional on Paramount ending its European distribution tie-up with Universal within 13 months of closing, the Commission said. It’s the latest of some 65 jurisdictions to clear or decline to challenge the merger, Bloomberg reports.

A US federal judge paused the Gulf-backed tie-up on a “strong showing” it hurts competition, after 12 states sued to block it. The deal is bankrolled by the Public Investment Fund and the Qatar Investment Authority through L'imad Holding.

What’s next: A US hearing on 3 August decides whether the pause holds until trial. Every day past September the transaction doesn’t close costs Paramount ticking fees owed to WBD shareholders — and a courtroom loss could trigger a USD 7 bn termination fee, on top of the USD 2.8 bn it already paid Netflix to walk away.

Kuwait raised USD 6 bn in a 2.5x oversubscribed bond issuance on Wednesday, even as the country was under fire from Iranian missiles and drones. The strong demand for the triple-tranche bond allowed Kuwait to tighten spreads by 25 bps, selling three-, five-, and 10-year bonds at 70-85 bps above treasuries.

ALSO WORTH KNOWING-

Misr Capital has tripled its money on the way out of Nile Scan. Elevate Capital has inked a definitive agreement to take Misr Capital — the investment arm of state-owned Banque Misr — out of Nile Scan and Labs for just under EGP 1 bn, in what Elevate Group CEO Tarek Moharram calls an LP swap. “Misr Capital offloaded its investment to a new set of investors raised and managed by Elevate,” Moharram tells us.

Three years, 3x: The deal — pending regulatory approvals — works out to a c. 3.2x all-cash return on the EGP 312 mn Misr Capital paid for its 70% stake in 2023, by our math. Worth a caveat: Elevate never owned Nile Scan outright — it controlled the company only by managing Misr Capital's investment in it, Moharram tells us.

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