March 2026 M&A and Private Equity Report: A Blockbuster Month Amid Geopolitical Turbulence

March 2026 was one of the strongest single months for global M&A and private equity dealmaking in the post-pandemic cycle, with Q1 2026 aggregate global deal value crossing $1 trillion, seven biopharma transactions each exceeding $1 billion closing in the final twelve days of March alone, and OpenAI's $122 billion funding round capping the month at an $852 billion valuation. Yet the market remained stubbornly 'K-shaped' — elevated deal values driven by blockbuster transactions while deal counts lagged historical averages, and private equity facing mounting pressure to deploy $1.3 trillion in buyout dry powder against a backlog of 32,000 unsold companies worth $3.8 trillion. This report, drawn from Bain, PitchBook, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Q1 earnings, EY Firepower, and Jefferies biopharma data, covers the defining deals, sector dynamics, credit-market conditions, and geographic patterns that shaped a blockbuster March amid geopolitical turbulence from the Iran conflict and renewed tariff uncertainty.

The quarter's defining tension is the gap between record dry powder and an increasingly challenging deployment environment — elevated multiples, tighter credit, and rising geopolitical risk. For dealmakers tracking which themes to watch through Q2 and beyond, the data points to four clear areas: AI infrastructure, biopharma (driven by $176 billion in patent cliff exposure), European defence (a generational rearmament cycle), and carve-outs (driven by PE exit pressure and corporate portfolio optimisation). This is the full picture, by the numbers.

Q1 deal volume tells a tale of two halves

Q1 2026 global M&A recorded one of the sharpest intra-quarter reversals in recent memory, starting with January's slowest monthly volume in over four years and ending with a March that closed out above $1 trillion in aggregate quarterly deal value. January saw sponsor deal count halve from December and fall 44% year-over-year. February then reversed course dramatically, with aggregate global monthly deal value nearly doubling to approximately $550 billion — bolstered by OpenAI's headline-grabbing funding round, a 130% surge in strategic-buyer activity, and year-over-year deal value jumping 106% even as deal counts remained 11% below the prior year. March closed the quarter with seven biopharma transactions each exceeding $1 billion — worth $29 billion combined — closing in the final twelve days alone, Dakota tracking over 1,800 new private-company transactions during the month, and PitchBook's Q1 2026 Global PE First Look recording 5,100 PE transactions valued at $481.6 billion for the full quarter.

Goldman Sachs's Q1 2026 earnings, reported April 13, confirmed the underlying strength: advisory revenue surged 89% to $1.5 billion, with total investment banking fees up 48% to $2.84 billion. JPMorgan, reporting April 14, posted IB fees up 28% to $2.88 billion and record trading revenue of $11.6 billion. For year-over-year context, 2025 established a formidable baseline — global M&A reached $4.7–5.0 trillion (up 40–43% from 2024), with 111 megadeals exceeding $5 billion and 60 deals above $10 billion. Q1 2026 is running roughly in line with or slightly ahead of this pace by value, while volume remains constrained — a pattern Barclays's Cathal Deasy characterises as 'a conviction cycle, not a volume cycle.'

The biggest deals that defined March

March 2026 featured an exceptional concentration of billion-dollar-plus transactions spanning biopharma, technology, industrials, financial services, and energy. Twenty distinct deals exceeded the $1 billion threshold, with aggregate disclosed value of the top twenty approaching $190 billion. Where valuation multiples were disclosed, they confirm the elevated pricing environment: Kinderhook's acquisition of Enhabit Home Health commanded approximately 10.2x EV/EBITDA on $108 million of EBITDA, and ITT's purchase of SPX FLOW implied roughly 3.7x revenue on a business generating over 21% EBITDA margins. The table below lists every March 2026 transaction we tracked above the $1.75 billion threshold, ordered by deal value.

Several of these transactions are already in Tentt's deal database with full editorial coverage — the marquee UK transaction of the quarter was Zurich Insurance's £8.1 billion take-private of Beazley plc at a 59.8% premium, creating a specialty insurance leader with approximately $15 billion in combined gross written premiums. Biopharma's defining triple was Eli Lilly's $7.8 billion acquisition of Centessa Pharmaceuticals, Merck's $6.7 billion acquisition of Terns Pharmaceuticals, and Biogen's $5.6 billion acquisition of Apellis Pharmaceuticals — three separate mega-deals targeting late-stage pipeline assets at a combined $20 billion. In industrials, ITT's $4.775 billion acquisition of SPX FLOW and Apollo's $3.7 billion acquisition of Nippon Sheet Glass — Apollo's largest-ever PE investment in Japan — anchored the sector. Hg Capital's $6.4 billion take-private of OneStream Software was the largest European PE take-private of the quarter.

Other significant transactions tracked in Tentt's database from the March 2026 wave include Gilead Sciences's $2.2 billion acquisition of Ouro Medicines, Leidos's $2.4 billion acquisition of ENTRUST Solutions in energy infrastructure, Spire's $2.48 billion acquisition of Piedmont Natural Gas from Duke Energy, Kinderhook's 10.2x EV/EBITDA acquisition of Enhabit Home Health and Hospice, and — closing just after quarter-end on April 9 — CD&R's $10.3 billion take-private of Sealed Air, which received EU clearance on March 23 and was financed with approximately $7.9 billion in debt. Every deal linked above includes full editorial coverage, buyer and target profiles, deal structure, and linked source citations on Tentt.

Biopharma and AI dominated the sector landscape

Biopharma was March's standout sector. Jefferies tracked 14 biopharma deals of $500 million or more in Q1 2026 alone — compared to 32 in all of 2025. At the current pace, annual biopharma deal value would reach approximately $172 billion versus $111 billion in 2025. EY's Firepower Report puts top-25 biopharma 'firepower' at $1.6 trillion (up 23% year-over-year), with patent cliffs on $176.4 billion in drug sales through 2029 driving urgency. Hospital M&A recorded 22 transactions in Q1 — the highest first quarter since 2020 — with $14.5 billion in transacted revenue. The pattern is consistent across the month: large pharma with maturing patent portfolios buying platform biotech assets with late-stage pipelines and novel mechanisms of action, exemplified by the Lilly-Centessa, Merck-Terns, and Biogen-Apellis deals covered above.

Technology and AI continued to lead by aggregate value. Software generated over $170 billion across 160+ deals in February alone. OpenAI's $122 billion round at an $852 billion valuation, NScale's $2 billion European AI infrastructure raise (the largest European VC round ever), and Hg Capital's $6.4 billion take-private of OneStream anchored the sector's March activity. AI was cited as a strategic rationale in roughly one-third of the 100 largest corporate M&A transactions in 2025 per PwC — a proportion most analysts expect to rise further in 2026 as enterprises move from AI experimentation to infrastructure buildouts and acquisition of specialist AI-native vendors.

Industrials posted strong activity driven by energy infrastructure, defence, and aerospace — ITT/SPX FLOW ($4.775B), Apollo/Nippon Sheet Glass ($3.7B), Rosebank's combined $3.05 billion acquisitions of MW Components and CPM, and PennAero's $1.45 billion purchase of TriMas Aerospace. Industrial M&A value rose 91% in 2025, the strongest gain of any sector per BCG. Financial services saw European banking M&A at its highest level in more than a decade, with UniCredit/Commerzbank, BPCE/Novo Banco (€6.4B), and Santander UK/TSB among notable consolidation plays. Oliver Wyman estimates banks will generate over $500 billion in excess capital above regulatory minima over the next three years, increasingly deployed into M&A rather than returned to shareholders.

European defence is entering what multiple sources describe as a 'once-in-a-generation' cycle, with military spending projected to grow approximately 9% annually through 2030. CSG N.V.'s $3.9 billion IPO on Euronext Amsterdam was the largest global IPO of Q1 2026 — a standalone data point that captures both the defence tailwind and the relative health of European capital markets compared to the near-dormant US IPO window.

Private equity faces a reckoning on exits and returns

The PE industry's central tension in 2026 is now acute: massive dry powder, stubbornly high entry multiples, and a growing exit backlog. Buyout-specific dry powder stands at $1.3 trillion per Bain, with total PE dry powder reaching $3.7–4.3 trillion depending on the source (Preqin and Goldman Sachs respectively). Approximately 50% of this capital sits in funds 2–5 years old — near record concentration levels. PitchBook recorded 975 exits valued at $306.7 billion in Q1 2026 — healthy relative to history but down from Q4 2025. Bloomberg reported buyout disposals totalled roughly $103 billion, representing a 36% year-over-year decline. The exit backlog now encompasses approximately 16,000 companies held longer than four years — 52% of total buyout inventory, the highest share on record per McKinsey. Average holding periods at exit have stretched to a historic 6.6–7 years, up from 5–6 years during 2010–2021.

Distributions as a percentage of NAV have remained below 15% for four consecutive years — an industry record. In Europe specifically, sponsor-to-sponsor deals accounted for 76.1% of exit value in Q1 2026 versus 49.6% for full-year 2025. As Nicolas Moura of PitchBook observed: 'With the IPO window still very much closed in Europe for PE firms, the only traction we are seeing in the exit market comes from PE firms selling to other PE firms.' Continuation vehicles grew 62% year-over-year in 2025, and secondary transaction volumes hit a record $240 billion. Fundraising remains the weakest link: Q1 2026 raised just $86 billion — largely flat year-over-year and the weakest environment since 2018. A record 6,628 funds globally are targeting $1.28 trillion, with average fundraising periods extending to 18.5 months. Half of LPs report being constrained in making new commitments because prior commitments remain uncalled.

The deployment-to-distribution gap is now the single most important data point in private equity. DPI has been below 15% of NAV for four consecutive years — an industry record — and Q1 2026 did not break the pattern.

Buyout multiples have plateaued at elevated levels

The median US PE buyout multiple sits at approximately 12x EV/EBITDA, with deals above $1 billion commanding 15.5x and those below $100 million trading below 10x per PitchBook. European PE deals trade at 11.2x, offering relative value versus US pricing. GF Data reports large-cap deals above $250 million exceeding 11x, while lower mid-market transactions ($25–100M) trade at 6–8x with materially less competition. Nearly 80% of GPs surveyed by StepStone and Bain expect multiples to remain flat in the coming year. Only 20% of GPs in S&P Global's April 2026 survey anticipate improved valuations, while 28% expect deterioration.

Bain's 2026 report captures the new reality succinctly: '12 is the new 5' — meaning that deals priced at today's elevated multiples demand substantially faster EBITDA growth to generate acceptable returns. As Hugh MacArthur, Bain's Global PE Chairman, put it: 'Multiples aren't doing the heavy lifting anymore and new deals are harder to pencil out. Alpha has to be earned operationally.' The practical implication for PE origination is that proprietary sourcing — finding targets before they go to auction — has become the single most important differentiator in PE returns, because it is the only reliable way to transact below the 12x median. We've covered the full framework for this in

detail in our PE origination gap analysis, which walks through why broker-intermediated deals at current multiples no longer produce acceptable returns without significant operational alpha on top.

Credit markets tightened sharply under geopolitical pressure

The leveraged loan market experienced its most challenging quarter since the 2020 pandemic. Total primary market activity of approximately $235–241 billion ran 34% behind Q1 2025's pace, though net new issuance of $64.6 billion was only 12% below the prior year — indicating that M&A-driven lending held up better than refinancing activity. March was notable as the first month without a single repricing since June 2023, reflecting deteriorating investor appetite. B-rated loan spreads widened approximately 100 basis points from January levels. The Morningstar LSTA US Leveraged Loan Index weighted average bid fell to 94.17 on March 3 — below the 'Liberation Day' low of 94.41 — before recovering modestly to 94.63 by March 31. Software-sector loans were hit hardest, declining 5.85% year-to-date amid fears of AI disruption that PitchBook termed the 'SaaSPocalypse.'

High-yield spreads widened from approximately 265 basis points at the start of the quarter to 317 by end-March, though they remained below the historical average. Default rates stayed manageable — trailing 12-month leveraged loan defaults at 1.23% (or 2.87% including distressed exchanges) — with Moody's projecting US defaults declining to 3.0% by October 2026. All three major central banks held rates steady in March: the Fed at 3.50–3.75%, the ECB at 2.00%, and the Bank of England at 3.75%. The Fed's updated projections raised PCE inflation to 2.7% while signalling at most one additional cut in 2026. The 10-year Treasury ended March at 4.32%, up 36 basis points over the month.

Private credit continues its structural ascent, with the market now exceeding $1.7 trillion — roughly one-third of total leveraged credit. Approximately 85% of LBOs are now financed through direct lenders rather than traditional bank-syndicated loans. However, stress is emerging: BDC share prices are down approximately 11% year-to-date, Blue Owl halted redemptions, and FS KKR lost its investment-grade rating. UBS projects private credit default rates rising approximately 2 percentage points to 6% in 2026. Banks are fighting back — Goldman, JPMorgan, and Bank of America have all established dedicated 'private capital M&A' teams, and banks' share of buyout financings above $1 billion recovered from 39% in 2023 to just over 50% in 2025.

Geographic patterns: US leads value, Europe catches up, Japan accelerates

The United States continues to dominate global M&A by value — accounting for less than 25% of volume but over 50% of deal value in 2025. US LBO values hit an all-time record of $397.5 billion in 2025, surpassing the prior 2007 peak. Goldman Sachs Q1 2026 advisory volume reached $438.9 billion, though this was down 2.4% year-over-year. The US regulatory environment has shifted towards a more transaction-friendly antitrust stance under the current administration, which most dealmakers describe as a tailwind for the remainder of the year.

The UK remained Europe's largest M&A market at $181.3 billion in 2025, marginally above 2024. March saw three firm public offers announced — headlined by Zurich's £8.1 billion bid for Beazley — plus seven further possible offers or sale processes, reflecting the FTSE 350's perceived undervaluation. UK financial services M&A reached £38 billion in 2025 (double the prior year), with inbound acquisitions rising over 25%. The CMA is implementing approximately 75 reforms under its new '4Ps framework' (pace, predictability, proportionality, process), with Chairman Doug Gurr — formerly of Amazon UK — steering a more pro-growth orientation.

Continental European M&A reached approximately $818.9 billion in announced deal value (up 23% year-over-year), led by the Netherlands (+171.6%), Spain (+63%), and Belgium (+57%). European PE activity totalled €645.3 billion across roughly 9,001 deals in 2025 (up 14.4%). European venture funding hit $17.6 billion in Q1 2026 (up 30% year-over-year), with AI claiming over 50% of European venture funding for the first time. Cross-border deal value globally increased 29% to $1.46 trillion in 2025, with US investors expected to account for one in four European PE deals in 2026. Japanese cross-border M&A is accelerating rapidly — Bloomberg reported on April 13 that the M&A boom in Japan is fuelling record corporate bond sales, with yen bond issuance rising 94% in March year-over-year, and Apollo's $3.7 billion Nippon Sheet Glass acquisition representing its largest-ever PE investment in Japan.

What the experts are predicting for the rest of 2026

The consensus across major advisory firms is cautiously bullish, with critical caveats around geopolitical risk. Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon described 2026 as a 'top-decile opportunity' for dealmaking. Stephan Feldgoise, Goldman's Head of Global M&A, stated: 'The foundational drivers heading into 2026 remain just as robust and encouraging.' Morgan Stanley's Tom Miles predicted 'a multi-year rebound in activity is set to continue across corporates and sponsors.' PwC's Josh Smigel noted: 'With ample capital and significant backlog, private equity is positioned for an active deal market in the near term.'

Survey data reinforces this optimism. 62% of US CEOs plan to pursue M&A in the next 12 months per EY — up 27 percentage points from September 2025. 90% of PE dealmakers expect increased deal numbers in 2026 per Deloitte, and 86% of PE executives feel 'highly confident' in deal execution per Citizens Financial. KPMG's global survey of 700 dealmakers calls 2026 'the year of the carve-out', with 71% of PE dealmakers open to or actively pursuing portfolio separations and Morgan Stanley expecting 50% greater separation volume than any year in the last decade.

However, significant risks remain. The Iran conflict and associated energy price shock (Brent crude above $110 per barrel) could push headline PCE inflation to 3.5% and trigger stagflationary pressure. Private credit stress — marked by redemption pressures and falling BDC valuations — could cascade. PE firm stock prices have experienced massive selloffs from peaks: Apollo down 41%, Blackstone down 46%, KKR down 48%. Marina Lukatsky of PitchBook cautioned: 'The expected rebound in buyouts and dealmaking has yet to materialize this year, as uncertainty around trade policy, interest rates and geopolitics has slowed activity.'

Conclusion: operational alpha has replaced financial engineering

March 2026 confirmed that the global M&A cycle is alive — but uneven. The sheer volume of billion-dollar-plus transactions across biopharma, AI, and industrials demonstrates that strategic imperatives around patent cliffs, AI integration, and scale are overriding macro caution for well-capitalised buyers. The quarter's defining tension is between massive pent-up capital (over $1 trillion in buyout dry powder alone) and an increasingly challenging deployment environment characterised by elevated multiples, tighter credit, and geopolitical disruption. The critical insight for the remainder of 2026 is that operational value creation has definitively replaced financial engineering as the primary return driver — Bain's '12 is the new 5' thesis captures a structural shift, not a cyclical one.

For dealmakers, the sectors to watch through Q2 and beyond are AI infrastructure, biopharma (driven by $176 billion in patent cliff exposure), European defence (a generational rearmament cycle), and carve-outs (driven by PE exit pressure and corporate portfolio optimisation). The market's trajectory will hinge on three questions: whether the Iran conflict de-escalates, whether private credit stress remains contained, and whether the massive deal pipeline translates into closed transactions at acceptable valuations. For PE firms whose primary challenge is finding deals at acceptable prices before they hit broker-driven auctions, the answer points increasingly toward proprietary origination infrastructure — the subject Tentt covers across its managed origination engagements and its research library.