About 42% of business leaders in Southeast Asia plan M&A deals in next year: study

Companies in the region may deploy aggressive capital for market share, Deloitte found.

Forty-two percent of business leaders in Southeast Asia plan to actively pursue deals in the next year, with 61% planning to do so in the next three years, reflecting the rise in business appetite in M&A and capital decisions, a study showed.

Companies in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) region are preparing to deploy capital offensively through M&A, partnerships, and bold plays for market share, Deloitte said in its APEC CEO Survey 2025.

In the TMT industry, company leaders that will potentially be involved in deal-making increased to 57% from 25%, it added.

Deal appetite is strongest in the ER&I and LSHC industries, where 65% and 63% of respondents are planning M&A activities, the study found.

Meanwhile, a fifth of business leaders expect capital to have easier access this year compared to the 55% over the next three years.

Smaller and mid-sized businesses are upbeat about a gradual easing in access to capital, whilst 42% of the largest firms share that optimism, perhaps through their broader exposure to macroeconomic turbulence, reckoned Deloitte.

Amongst regions, Latin America business leaders (71%) showed the most optimism in M&A growth in the next three years, followed by Northeast Asia (64%), Southeast Asia (61%), and North America (54%).

The survey gathered insights from 1,252 senior APEC business leaders across 18 economies in the multinational, regional enterprise, and private firms. Respondents included more than 270 leaders in Southeast Asia.

Follow the link for more news on

Deloitte

Reaching the people who run Asia's businesses is harder than it used to be.

Inboxes are crowded. Attention is short. The executives you most want to reach — the founders, CFOs, and operators who actually move budgets — are the hardest to find through the usual channels. If you're building a company, a category, or a reputation, you already know this.

We've spent twenty years building the room they read. Singapore Business Review is where senior decision makers in Singapore and across Southeast Asia come for business coverage they can't get elsewhere — in print, online, and in person at the summits and roundtables we host across seven markets.

If you have something these readers should know about — a point of view worth publishing, a product worth their attention, an event worth their time — we'd like to hear what you're trying to do.

Book a meeting

| Or download the media kit (PDF)

240,000 senior readers quarterly in print Top 1,700 Singapore companies reached

7 markets across Southeast Asia