高盛：并购市场活跃，IPO市场全面开放

I would say the tone in the boardroom is very much one of enthusiasm and confidence in deploying capital on M&A transactions and in particular, a desire to build scale in their core businesses. So you're right, uh, year to date. We're currently at $3.8 trillion in announced M&A volume. And importantly though, it's been very much a strategic driven M&A market. And that's been pronounced at the upper end of the M&A market.

So if you look at the number of transactions north of $10 billion year to date, where to record, we're at 49 so far this year. Now what is driving that? I think there's a few factors. So one is and I'm sure we're going to talk about it as CEO resilience. I think they are more adept at dealing with uncertainty. The macro backdrop has held up. So that leaves them confidence to lean in and deploying capital. And there's a sense that they want to exploit their first mover advantage.

So they want to maintain their competitive positioning and and get ahead of their peers by doing M&A. But doesn't that in itself? Sorry if I can interrupt for a second, suggests that there is this period of upheaval. If they feel the need to get out in front, there's AI, there's all these things happening. How much of it is I don't want to say anxiety because clearly they're confident if they're doing these things, but is it suggestive of a fast changing landscape?

I don't think it's anxiety. I think CEOs and corporates generally have just become much more adept at dealing with volatility and near-term pressures. So if you take a step back over the last several years, they've had a lot of potential headwinds. So Covid and then the ensuing supply chain disruption globally. Last year, we had the evolution in trade policy and the tariffs that followed. And then this year, with the events in the Middle East, we've obviously had rising energy prices, which have become somewhat inflationary.

So they've been dealing with a lot. But I think their true north, frankly, is focusing on delivering long term shareholder value and executing on their strategic Priorities and and therefore not necessarily waiting around until they have the perfect set of conditions before they execute a transaction. Well, given that and the fact that they can weather all these that are frankly existential crises from war to inflation to Covid to now ISE disruption, is there anything at this point that you think could slow down M&A volume?

At the moment, we're not seeing any slowdown in the strategic dialogue around their appetite to deploy capital. Um, you know, there are the things that could potentially offset that or the potential headwinds. I would say any deterioration in the macro. So, for example, if we see energy prices remain elevated and that becomes very inflationary, that could be problematic. Um, to the extent that we see a fundamental shift in, in monetary policy.

So for example, as interest rates go the wrong way, the cost of capital becomes more expensive. That could be an issue. And obviously geopolitics is always a wild card. You know tough to predict. But as of now, we're not seeing any slowdown in strategic dialogue around M&A. And I would say, you know, whatever that headwind ultimately ends up being, that potentially dampens the M&A market. We're probably not going to be able to protect it right now.

Having lived through a number of M&A cycles. Can we talk about the part of this M&A environment that did slow down and is only now just showing signs of life, and that's private equity sponsor backed M&A. To what degree are we seeing signs of life. Is the logjam finally breaking. We're seeing signs of life but it's gradual. So it's very much, as I said, a strategic driven M&A market at the moment. Um but to give you one statistic.

So um, private equity M&A volumes are up now 10% by deal value year over year. They've obviously faced, um, you know, a number of potential headwinds this year, whether they were long software assets in their portfolios, private credit. There's been a lot of noise around that. And obviously interest rates have not come down quite as materially as far as the market originally anticipated. But we're starting to see, you know, more confidence amongst our private equity clients.

There is more capital floating around potential take privates. And I would say, you know, with $1.5 trillion of capital to deploy, you know, that's got to be put to work at some point. And obviously M&A is going to be a big component of that. One of the factors in this world where there has been so much dry powder on the private side, is that companies are staying private for longer. And a lot of those once startups that are still private are doing deals.

There was stripe, for example, buying Open Router just this week. Is that an enduring trend? Do you think these private companies being the ones to execute M&A? There's no question that, um, you know, the private market offers more flexibility to raise capital now than it perhaps did ten years ago. And that is allowing corporates such as the one that you mentioned, you know, to deploy capital on M&A and do private financings and uh, and put that money to work.

So I think the pressure to access the public markets to raise funds is not the same imperative that it was. But that said, you know, we're currently experiencing a very healthy IPO market at the moment. Does that change at all that that private part or those private tech companies changed all the allocations at Goldman? Is that something that you increase, for example, allocations business wise to it? Just that growing part of the market?

No, not really. I don't think it fundamentally changes that that dynamic. But obviously we're servicing clients whether they are, you know, uh, their intent is to remain private for several years or they have ambitions to go public. What are the parts of the business that you think you would like to see grow and are growing more within the investment banking universe? Well, obviously, we were fortunate enough, as we talked about, to be in a relatively healthy M&A market at the moment.

And we can talk about the IPO market is wide open for business. So we're seeing a lot of growth both in the M&A side and in financing across the board. At call out a couple of sectors that I see, uh, having a disproportionate amount of growth. Obviously I infrastructure there's enormous amount of activity around uh, around that space. I would say we're seeing a great deal of activity. I mentioned at the larger end of the M&A market, but also in the mid-market, right.

You know, you're seeing a lot of private capital going into that. So that's an area of growth for us. Um, and you're seeing other, um, other mechanisms for private equity taking capital loss on the table, uh, besides just going for an IPO. So for example, continuation vehicles. So I would point to all three of those as real meaningful areas of growth at the moment. If we can talk more about the IPO market, um, obviously space was huge for Goldman as a whole.

We still have some blockbuster IPOs coming up. Anthropic, OpenAI. So the big ones clearly will OpenAI, maybe not, at least this year. The big ones are clearly coming to market. But when you look at the IPO environment in its entirety, how healthy is it or how dominated is it by the mega deals? Yeah, the IPO market is open for business. So let's start there. And I would say the issuance has been fairly broad based uh year to date.

There's no question that, you know, the I tailwind has had a pronounced effect on the IPO market. You mentioned SpaceX, but when you look at I related to IPOs, it roughly represents around 20% of the number of companies that have gone public year to date, but over 50% of the amount of capital that's been raised. Now, obviously, that latter number is somewhat skewed by the SpaceX IPO. But what I would say is when you look at the non AI related IPOs, they're up 30% year over year.

So we've seen re