Charlie Bouckaert

speaker

135 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 30 Jul

Charlie Bouckaert’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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Making Sense · Deals and discipline: What’s driving markets at mid-year? · 30 Jul 2026 podcast

And look, I think we also didn't touch on it, but clearly software M&A in the sponsor world has been a big theme that's driven volumes.

And while people sort out the impact of AI on software companies, that's kind of on pause.

We absolutely think that will return, but that's not the market we're in either.

And so I think that's putting further pressure on sponsor volumes.

One of these we haven't talked about yet that has contributed to the desire to do deals is a perception that there is a more accommodating policy environment in Washington, certainly from an antitrust perspective.

And I think the perception has probably run ahead of the reality.

I mean, we've certainly seen some people test the bounds on some deals that frankly didn't seem like they were going to get traction.

But overall, when we look at approvals for deals, they are quicker and the number of investigations is down.

So I think that is, in fact, real, though maybe not as significant as people think.

At the start of this year, we were having a lot of conversations with clients and frankly amongst ourselves about the impact of the midterms with a general view that what was driving first half volumes was that people wanted to get things out there and done before the midterms.

I'd say what's interesting to me right now

is nobody seems to be talking about the impact of midterms on activity levels and everyone expects them to remain really high.

And so either that's because ultimately it's the secular themes that we've been talking about that are just such an imperative to activity or the market's wrong and it's going to have a more significant impact.

My guess is it doesn't dampen activity all that much.

And while it may have some impact and you see the potential for a more distracted Washington, it will have a more limited impact than people had anticipated.

I know you've done a lot of research over time of the impact of midterms.

Generally speaking, it's high on the dialogue front and it's less on the actual impact front.

I would take a partially contrarian view on this issue, which is when you think about the amount of policy uncertainty that we've had, look at tariffs as the main example.

They're in.

They're going up.

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