How will geopolitics, tariffs, and generative AI affect the global dealmaking environment in 2025?

I'm Alison Nathan and this is Goldman Sachs Exchanges.

To help explain the state of deals and the road ahead, I'm joined again by Stefan Feldgoyce and Mark Sorrell,

the co-heads of the global mergers and acquisitions business in Goldman Sachs's Global Banking and Markets Division.

Stefan is joining me here in the New York studio, and Mark is joining us remotely from London.

Mark, Stefan, welcome back to the program.

Pleasure to be sitting down with both of you again.

Great to be back. Thank you. Thanks, Alison.

Stefan, when we sat down a year ago, the MNA market was beginning to show signs of life,

and I say that pretty hesitantly because activity

was still pretty subdued. But this year, inflation has continued to moderate. We have seen

the long anticipated rate-cutting cycle of the Fed finally begin. And of course, the S&B 500 is

making new highs, I would say almost daily making new highs.

So putting all of that together, how has that helped spur dealmaking activity this year?

What have you observed in terms of how dealmaking activity has evolved over the course of 2024?

It's interesting.

If you roll back to when we were together a year ago, we had a view that

2024 was going to be somewhere in the range of a plus 10% year relative to 2023. And in fact,

that's largely what it's been, but it certainly has been what I'll call is a gradual

crescendo of factors that have really driven what I'll call a plus 10% year. And oh, by the way,

as we look to 25, which we'll talk about,

we are balanced and have a similar view in terms of 25 over 24. But you saw strategic activity,

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