Dealmakers Head to New Orleans to Look Beyond ‘Havoc’ in M&A

(Bloomberg) — Dealmakers gathered at an annual conference in New Orleans this week to catch their breath and try to look for reasons to be optimistic about a mergers and acquisitions market that has disappointed so far in 2025.

“People want to do deals,” Audra Cohen, co-managing partner at law firm Sullivan & Cromwell’s general practice group, said during a presentation Thursday at Tulane University’s Corporate Law Institute event. She was speaking against a backdrop of falling deal values, with activity in part impacted by US President’s Donald Trump’s policies on the economy and foreign affairs. 

“Things like the tariffs give people a little bit of pause because they’re having to look at their business, at the supply chain and trying to figure out what that means,” Cohen said. “Until a little bit of this settles, it’s going to be challenging to get deals done particularly at valuations that people would expect.” 

Every year around this time, Wall Street’s clubby network of M&A lawyers, bankers and public relations professionals heads to Louisiana to talk shop at Tulane. Many dealmakers began 2025 expecting a banner year under Trump. But they’ve instead crashed into the harsh reality of trade wars and geopolitical clashes.

“There’s a lack of predictability right now,” said Scott Barshay, chair of the corporate department at Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison. “Our clients are kind of waiting and seeing right now to see how things sort out. There’s a lot of interest in doing things.”

Barshay said that the head of a company that was seeking to pursue a big transaction recently told him that the company plans to “wait a little while,” as it didn’t want to strike a deal only to see the market crater the next day. Barshay said he still expected the year to end on a positive note.

“There’s just a little bit of a pause but I don’t think it’s a lot of pause,” he said. “I think we’re going to see over the next few weeks announcements of some bigger deals coming out.” 

Global deal values are down about 16% in 2025 to roughly $485 billion, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Jennifer Muller, co-head of Houlihan Lokey Inc.’s special committee advisory and fairness and solvency opinions practices, said it will be hard for values to hit the $3.5 trillion that many had expected this year. This week’s movement in the VIX Index, a closely watched measure of stock market volatility, is a worry, she said. 

“In order for M&A and IPOs to flourish, typically market volatility needs to stay below or around 20 on a consistent basis,” Muller said. “Most have predicted that Trump’s actions would create some enhanced volatility and indeed the VIX has been dancing around 20 and yesterday ended around 20. This wreaks havoc with M&A transactions.”

Muller said she saw potential for a pickup in activity in deals around artificial intelligence, pharmaceuticals, financial services and oil and gas. 

Another wrinkle in the M&A market under Trump 2.0 is that the US government could want more of a say in negotiations around deals that it sees as having the potential to impact America’s competitiveness. This week, BlackRock Inc. led one of the biggest acquisitions of the year in a deal that marked both the firm’s expanded reach in infrastructure and a win for Trump, who had raised concerns over control of key ports near the Panama Canal.

“Political leaders are getting into the deal process and [asking] for political concessions around the deal,” said Leo Strine Jr., of counsel in the corporate department at Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz. “That’s a new dynamic. If the US is going to involve itself in who does a deal, if the US government has a perspective on a cross-border deal, is the other government going to be involved?” 

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