Wall Street bankers say the merger outlook has already jumped to 2025.

By Nupur Anand

MIAMI (Reuters) – Wall Street banks are already enjoying a revival this year in mergers and acquisitions that is fueling broader investment banking activity.

It may take some time for deals to materialize, but acquisitions, including banking deals, could be encouraged in the second half of 2025.

Here are excerpts from the Frontier Digital Finance Conference in Miami:

Avinash Mehrotra, Associate Head of M&A AMERICAS, Goldman Sachs:

You have four banks with over a trillion dollars in assets. I think there’s an expectation that the regulators will accept at least another one or two in that stratosphere so that we have a more competitive environment.

But I think we’ll see the most activity in the regional banking space, which includes banks with less than $100 billion in assets.

In time, it’s going to start off a little slow, but it will pick up speed.

David McGowan, Managing Director at Barclays:

M&A activity has picked up significantly post-elections. There are a number of factors driving the demand for leverage in financial institutions, including years of market turmoil, multiple sponsors and some skewed ratios.

There is now a pent-up interest in getting deals done. There are lots of offers on the market right now, lots of properties for sale, but it’s challenging to thread the needle and try to get things done.

Jeffrey Levine, Global Head of Financial Services at Houlihan Lockie:

More capital has been raised in the past three years than in private equity history, but not deployed.

There was certainly a mismatch between buying and selling and a lot of it had to do with the interest rate environment and credit conditions, but that is now changing.

We are seeing more activity in the markets. We have more deals in 2025 than we’ve had in the last two years.

(Reporting by Nupur Anand in Miami; Editing by Lananh Nguyen)