Lauren Thomas

Watching Trump and what's going on down in D.C.

is going to continue to be a huge factor in the M&A market.

It was a sort of roller coaster for deals this year.

There was a lot of optimism that 2025 was going to be a blockbuster year for M&A.

And then as we head into the spring, you have Liberation Day and just a lot of uncertainty in the market around tariffs, this trade war that kicked off.

And that put a lot of deals on pause.

But then after Labor Day, a switch really flipped and M&A was back.

Dealmakers settled into this new norm under Trump and the year finished off incredibly strong.

It certainly got a lot of folks on Wall Street even more optimistic about what 2026 could bring.

The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission just haven't been as strict as they were in previous administrations.

They've really only sued to block a handful of mergers previously.

under Trump.

One of the biggest deals of the year was this massive railroad merger, Union Pacific buying Norfolk Southern.

That was a more than $70 billion deal to create this transcontinental railroad operator here in the US.

Everyone that I talked to said just wouldn't have been feasible in prior administrations, would have likely been challenged in the courts, but seems like a much clearer pathway to close under Trump.

the stock market, where it's at, it's gotten companies feeling more confident to go out and do something big.

Another element, and this is always the case, is you see one company go out and do a big deal, something splashy.

And then that kind of gets everyone else thinking, you know, are we about to miss the boat if we don't do anything?

And you've got this phenomenon now of private credit.

And so it's you don't necessarily need to call up