The volume of the M&A market with a threshold of $1 million in the third quarter of 2025 decreased significantly compared to the result of the same period last year. This is stated in the bulletin "Market of Mergers and Acquisitions" of the AK&M News Agency (issue No. 331).
The total value of transactions in the three reporting months decreased by 1.7 times, amounting to $7.24 billion against $12.45 billion a year earlier. The number of transactions also decreased: 88 transactions took place in the reporting period, compared with 102 a year earlier (-13.7%). In ruble terms, the amount of transactions in the quarter decreased by 48.1% against the result of the same period last year to 591.28 billion rubles from 1139.1 billion rubles.
However, this drop is mainly due to the completion of a major sale of a Russian asset abroad in September 2024. For example, the Swedish fund EQT X, managed by EQT Partners, bought control of Acronis from the company's founders, Russian programmers, as well as a number of investment funds. The estimated value of the transaction was $4 billion. AK&M analysts did not note any transactions of this volume during the quarter.
During the period, AK&M analysts recorded only one major deal worth more than $1 billion. It was a transaction in the mechanical engineering industry — the purchase by S8 Capital holding Armen Sargsyan and MT-Integration Group of 79% in Aquarius Group of Companies for an estimated $1,195 million.
The second largest transaction took place in the construction and development sector — the nationalization of Vostokcement LLC, the largest Far Eastern cement producer, and Renaissance Group of Companies from Igor Pushkarev, the ex-mayor of Vladivostok. The state estimated the assets at $953/3 million.
The third place was taken by a deal with transport assets — the September sale of Volga-Dnepr Airlines, which owns the aircraft fleet. Taking into account the debt, its estimated value was $900 million. However, the price of realizable assets increased: the average transaction cost, excluding the largest, increased by 21.7% to $69.5 million from $57.1 million (excluding the largest) in the same period of 2024.
In general, the volume of the M&A market from January to September 2025 amounted to $25.91 billion— which is 23.3% lower than the total of January-September 2024. The number of transactions for the period was 288 against 321 a year earlier.
One of the negative factors affecting the M&A market is still the Bank of Russia's excessively high key rate of 16.5% per annum. The high cost of borrowing hinders asset purchases.
The trend towards forced nationalization of private companies continues. At the same time, the nationalization of enterprises most often entails compensation for damage caused to the state by the former owners, and it is by this amount that the transaction is evaluated.
However, in some cases, nationalization is carried out without an assessment of compensation and represents the expropriation of assets by the State from the previous owners. Previously, such transactions were not included in the bulletin. Since the beginning of 2025, we have made changes to the accounting methodology for such transactions and assess them as a loss for the former owner — that is, by a negative value. Such transactions are accounted for separately in the statistics. At the same time, we did not notice any such cases in the third quarter of 2025.
