Originally published in French on KLDP Institute’s corporate LinkedIn page on September 14, 2026. By Kandy Lieu and David-Alexandre Pronier.
An acquisition’s price tag, when disclosed, gets the attention. The conditions that will determine whether the deal delivers on its promise are far less visible. That gap is where KLDP Institute’s work on protecting value begins.
Before looking back at 2023, 2024, and 2025, we need to get one thing straight: which market are we measuring? Acquisitions of French companies, overseas deals involving French groups, and minority investments do not necessarily belong to the same dataset.
2023 and 2024: Compare like with like
In its French-German M&A study published in May 2025, PwC counted 3,354 transactions in France in 2023 and 3,244 in 2024. [S1] Based on Zephyr data, this series also includes minority investments, capital increases, joint ventures, share buybacks, and demergers. Its scope goes well beyond acquisitions of controlling stakes.
A separate PwC study, published in February 2025, reported 1,326 French transactions in 2024, with a total value of $60.3 billion. [S2] Those figures cannot be substituted for the earlier series. The gap between the two publications makes it essential to keep track of each study’s scope, database, and extraction date.
2025: A reported rebound, with a cutoff date that matters
Le Monde, citing LSEG, reported $192 billion in announced deals involving a French company between January 1 and December 17, 2025. [S3] That figure is neither limited to French acquisition targets nor a year-end total of transactions completed by December 31.
These figures do not form a single, consistent three-year series. Plotting them as a continuous trend would create a false sense of precision. For a business leader, the first question comes before any commentary on the economy: which deals are actually included in the number I’m being shown?
What these numbers cannot tell us
An increase in deal value does not prove that companies are getting better at integration. A drop in deal volume does not prove that the remaining transactions create more value. These statistics describe transaction activity. They do not assess what happens afterward to customers, expertise, or an organization’s ability to work effectively.
That is where we want to contribute. Every acquisition rests on a set of assumptions: retaining expertise, gaining access to customers, combining offerings, or accelerating growth. Each assumption depends on people, relationships, decisions, and everyday working practices.
Consider a hypothetical example. A buyer plans to cross-sell a complementary offering to the target company’s customers. The financial case may look sound. But if the two sales teams cannot jointly qualify an opportunity, their compensation plans work against each other, or customers reject the new offering, the potential stays on paper. Market statistics cannot establish whether these problems exist. They have to be examined within each company.
Turn the observation into a leadership question
We suggest connecting each promise behind an acquisition to three things: a capability the business needs, an observable vulnerability, and a decision with a named owner. Retaining a customer base, for example, requires knowing who holds the relationships, what could weaken them, and who is responsible for acting.
This approach does not replace financial analysis. It makes some of the conditions behind the financial case explicit. It also aligns with Bain’s emphasis on preparing for integration during due diligence. [S4]
Before asking what a company is worth, another question deserves a place at the table: what needs to keep working for that value to materialize?
Kandy Lieu & David-Alexandre Pronier | KLDP Institute
Sources
S1 — PwC — Marchés français et allemands du M&A, May 5, 2025 (in French)
S2 — PwC — Les tendances du M&A en 2025, February 13, 2025 (in French)
S4 — Bain & Company — The 10 Steps to Successful M&A Integration, 2024
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