2024 Deals in review

Healthcare

During 2024 the private healthcare sector has seen a lot activity despite the uncertain economic and political backdrop. Our team has had a record year completing deals across the sector and supporting businesses to find new partners to support their growth journeys. The October budget accelerated a number of deals in the sector leading to a high level of completions just before the end of October. We have worked on deals across the private healthcare sector this year, with community healthcare and health tech standing out as areas of interest for investors. The Darzi report has strengthened the importance of providers into the NHS and digital solutions have been at the forefront of streamlining processes, reducing waitlists and getting people onto the right case pathways quicker. The outlook for 2025 looks promising for the private healthcare sector and we expect to see continued acquisition activity from both trade and investors keeping the market moving.

Transaction highlights
  

Manufacturing and industrials

2024 delivered a robust level of M&A activity in the manufacturing and industrials market. Trade buyers continue to acquire capabilities and consolidate, while financial investors have backed higher growth sub-sectors and companies that are innovating in their chosen markets, such as, developing new, more environmentally friendly, materials for the manufacturing supply chain. There remains many exit options available to manufacturing and industrial businesses as the family office and Industrial holding company market has developed and become even more established, alongside other options that have grown in popularity, such as, employee ownership trusts. This range of exit options are illustrated in a selection of our deals in 2024 outlined below.

Transaction highlights

Financial services (FS)

The UK financial services M&A market was a buoyant one in 2024, following on from a more subdued 2023. In particular, we saw extremely high M&A volumes leading up to the budget at the end of October as owner managed businesses anticipated higher capital gains tax rises. Overseas acquirers and investors were increasingly active in the UK market, partly as a result of the perceived requirement for product and/or geographical expansion in those sub-sectors where market consolidation is further developed and partly driven by a weak sterling.

The wealth and asset management sector, in particular, continued to be highly active, driven largely by sector consolidation in the IFA space. Despite recent activity, with between 400-500 adviser firms acquired annually over the last few years, the sector still remains relatively fragmented, and we anticipate this level of deal activity to continue over the coming year, as platform businesses continue to progress their buy-and-build and vertical integration strategies.

In the insurance sector, the popularity of scale deals was a noticeable feature of 2024. The continuing quest for scale, diversification and further control of distribution channels, and a requirement to deploy capital in an increasingly consolidated market, particularly by Private Equity backed assets, is a trend we expect to continue into 2025 and beyond. We also saw an increase in UK firms and investors seeking to expand globally to continue growth in markets which have not seen as much consolidation activity, again we expect this to continue over the coming years.

There was also an uptick in deal activity within the lending sector driven by funding cost synergies, capital optimisation and consolidation within challenger banks (albeit with building societies emerging as surprise consolidators). With stabilisation in interest rates and increased certainty around the macro-political environment, the lending sector is one to watch for an uptick in deal activity particularly with the strong underlying performance of a number of businesses in this sub-sector.

Within the wider financial services sector, Fintech continues to be very attractive to Private Equity, with Regtech and Wealthtech emerging as the ‘hottest’ subsectors. Both Pensions and Fund Administration M&A activity escalated during 2024, and we expect to see this trend continue in 2025.

Transaction highlights