Dearth of Smaller M&A Raises Questions Even as Megadeals Abound

After a start to the year that’s been dominated by megadeals, a shortage of bite-sized transactions has some dealmakers concerned about the health of the market for mergers and acquisitions.

Parsing the year’s M&A numbers shows a top-heavy market. There have been $370 billion of deals globally valued at more than $10 billion announced through April 22, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s more than the combined value of transactions worth $1 billion to $10 billion -- typically the bread-and-butter of the dealmaking ecosystem -- the data show.