Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (GS.US) leads the EMEA mergers and acquisitions advisory market, with the AI trend driving the size of mergers and acquisitions to a 19-year high in the first half of the year.

According to statistics compiled by the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG), in the first half of 2026, Wall Street financial giant Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (GS.US) expanded its market share in the European, Middle Eastern, and African regions (EMEA region) in merger advisory business, capturing the largest market share in nearly a decade for the same period. The statistics show that in the first half of 2026, the total trading volume in the EMEA region reached $676 billion, more than double the level in 2025, and set a new high scale in the region in the past 19 years, reflecting the unprecedented wave of technology mergers brought about by the AI boom and the surge in merger scale under the backdrop of looser regulatory constraints. Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. is also the absolute leader in global merger markets, investment banking, and financial trading businesses, and has long held a dominant position in the advisory field in the EMEA region. However, analysis of the LSEG data reports that in the first half of this year, the second-largest commercial banking giant in the EMEA region, JPMorgan Chase, successfully slightly narrowed the gap with Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. The statistics show that in the first six months of 2026, Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. provided advisory services for 111 merger transactions, accounting for 44% of the total EMEA merger amount in actual value, higher than 42% for the same period a year ago. Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.'s latest market share in the EMEA region merger market is the highest since January to June 2018, when its share reached 46%. Compared with its competitors, Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. leads JPMorgan Chase by 9 percentage points, with the latter providing advisory services for 99 announced merger market transactions, with a market share of 35% by value. According to analysis of historical ranking data, this is lower than the margin by which Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. led JPMorgan Chase by 11 percentage points in the first half of 2025. On a global scale, Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. has a market share of 38% and is the advisor with the highest number of transactions among all financial advisors. Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. advises on the largest-scale merger transactions Measured by the number of merger transactions, independent boutique investment bank Rothschild advised on 163 transactions, surpassing Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.; but Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.'s overall leading position is based on its advisory services for 15 out of 20 of the largest-scale merger transactions. This includes advising consumer giant Unilever PLC Sponsored ADR on its sale of its food business for about $45 billion to McCormick, in which Morgan Stanley also participated and provided related advisory services; this was the largest-scale merger transaction in the EMEA region during that period. Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. also advised on the $34 billion merger between TK Elevators and Kone. While Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. participated in 13 of the largest-scale transactions in the region, it did not participate in the merger between McCormick and Unilever PLC Sponsored ADR. Last year, as a result of the initial uncertainty following the return of President Donald Trump to the White House at the beginning of the year, global merger activity briefly stalled. The current merger market remains highly volatile, and bankers say that if deals fail to materialize and are removed from the rankings, there could be significant changes in the rankings this year. For example, Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. had advised Deutsche Bank, which had been trying to fend off a $28 billion takeover bid from UniCredit Bank. However, bankers also say that global companies have decided to look beyond market turbulence. "Companies are taking a long-term strategic perspective and investing in where they want to be in the next few decades, not just the next few quarters," said Carsten Woehrn, Co-Head of EMEA Mergers and Acquisitions at Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. Valeria Vitkova, Associate Professor of Finance at the Bayes Business School, said that Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.'s dominant position in deal-making highlights significant changes in the competitive landscape since the global financial crisis, with players in the field becoming increasingly narrow after suffering heavy blows from the crisis. "The company's continued leadership position reflects not just a few consecutive favorable years. It seems to represent a sustained advantage in merger advisory competition, and this advantage has continued through the post-crisis period," Vitkova said. She added that during this period, especially in the era of AI, deal-making has become even more complex. AI is reshaping the global industrial landscape The record high in EMEA merger activity is benefiting from both relaxed regulations and improved financing conditions, as well as from the AI wave driving companies to reallocate assets and compete for technological capabilities and scale advantages. LSEG data shows that global M&A activity in the first half of 2026 reached around $2.8 trillion, a 48% year-on-year increase, with 47 mega-deals exceeding $100 billion contributing nearly half of the total transaction value, with the technology transaction volume reaching around $649 billion, with companies related to AI applications and AI computing infrastructure-intensive sub-sectors being the most important drivers. A recent study by PwC also predicts that global transaction volume could reach $4 trillion in 2026, emphasizing that the AI super wave is amplifying a "K-shaped" transaction pattern: AI infrastructure assets such as power and data centers are hot, while traditional software assets are being revalued due to AI disruption risk, attracting attention for large corporate acquisitions. Undoubtedly, the unprecedented AI super wave is becoming a key structural engine for the recovery of mergers and acquisitions, while relaxed regulations, the return of mega-deals, corporate strategic restructuring, and reinvigorated cross-border capital are all propelling the EMEA merger activity to a 19-year high. The combination of factors such as "AI reshaping the industrial landscape + relaxed regulatory environment + return of mega-deals + long-term strategic restructuring of companies" is driving a resurgent wave of mergers and acquisitions, not only in the EMEA region but perhaps also in global markets. Morgan Stanley predicts that by 2028, nearly $3 trillion in AI-related infrastructure investments will flow through the global economy, with over 80% of the spending still ahead. Morgan Stanley also predicts that supply chain bottlenecks at the AI computing infrastructure level have expanded from "large-scale purchases of GPUs/ASICs" to "a complete set of AI data center delivery processes striving to simultaneously address data center power equipment, liquid cooling, data center CPUs, DRAM/NAND/HBM, data center optical communication/optical interconnection, high-performance Ethernet network infrastructure, transformers, gas turbines, and more."