US President Donald Trump during a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, on March 24.
Photographer: Samuel Corum/Sipa/Bloomberg
Bankers Were Dreaming of M&A Riches Under Trump. It Hasn’t Worked Out, Yet
Dealmakers started 2025 predicting one of the best hauls in a decade. It wasn’t long before they had to deliver a stark reality check.
Across Wall Street, the world’s leading mergers and acquisitions advisers are sounding the alarm: the Donald Trump-driven deals boom they’d all been dreaming of isn’t happening yet.
Instead, dealmaking is essentially on hold, according to top bankers at Morgan Stanley and UBS Group AG. Kirkland & Ellis, the world’s No. 1 legal adviser on M&A, has warned that lenders are more selective about the transactions they’re willing to back. And at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., one senior strategist slashed his prediction of a 25% increase in US M&A this year to just 7%.