2024's M&A rebound: the year the market came back

Exit Mode recorded 148 published deals in 2024. That alone does not prove the market was back, but the sequence does. In a six-week run late in the year, BlackRock acquires Preqin, Patient Square Capital acquires Patterson Companies, Blackstone acquires Smartsheet and Schlumberger acquires ChampionX all landed across different buyer types and sectors. That mix matters more than any one headline. When a market is still frozen, deals cluster around a narrow set of distressed or unavoidable situations. When a market is reopening, activity broadens. The 2024 archive shows breadth returning before confidence became consensus.

Exit Mode's view is that 2024 was the rebound year, not because every process got easy, but because conviction started to show up in enough places at once that founders could no longer treat the recovery as anecdotal. The rate-hike shock of 2022 had faded. The caution of 2023 had not vanished, but it had become selective rather than universal. Strategic buyers came back for assets that extended control. Private equity came back for software and healthcare names that could handle a cleaner take-private process. The lesson is not that the market snapped back to 2021. It is that the first phase of a real recovery looks measurable before it looks euphoric.

Software buyers stopped waiting for perfect clarity

The cleanest sign of reactivation in 2024 was software. Blackstone acquires Smartsheet, GTCR / Insight Partners acquires Tricentis, NVIDIA acquires RUN:AI, Icon Parent acquires Instructure Holdings and Bending Spoons US acquires Brightcove are not copies of one another, but they rhyme. Some are sponsor-led. Some are strategic. Some are still in review. What ties them together is that buyers were willing to move on software infrastructure, workflow and capability assets without waiting for a perfect macro backdrop.

That is how a market comes back in practice. It does not reopen through speeches about optimism. It reopens when buyers decide that the cost of waiting exceeds the cost of acting. In 2024, software looked attractive again because buyers could see how these assets fit a broader operating plan. A private equity buyer could imagine cleaner ownership and better margins. A strategic buyer like NVIDIA could justify owning a capability layer rather than partnering around it. Founders should notice the change in tone here. Recovery starts when buyers go from admiring a target category to underwriting it.

Private capital returned where cash flow and control were obvious

The second pattern is that private capital did not come back as a vague promise. It came back through control deals. Patient Square Capital acquires Patterson Companies and Space Finco acquires Avid Bioservices were both completed healthcare take-privates. Blackstone acquires Smartsheet and Icon Parent acquires Instructure Holdings did similar work in technology. Even Apollo acquires Barnes Group, still in review, fits the same instinct: buyers wanted the whole asset, not a light option on future upside.

That is an important correction to the lazy phrase that PE dry powder was always ready to deploy. In 2022 and much of 2023, capital existed but caution blocked motion. In 2024, the motion returned where the ownership case was straightforward. Buyers wanted operational room, less public-market noise and targets that could support a clear post-close plan. For founders, that is one of the best signals that a pipeline is improving. A market is not really back when buyers ask for endless information. It is back when they are prepared to own the consequences of control.

Strategic buyers widened the recovery beyond software

A third lesson from 2024 is that the rebound was broad enough to move across sectors rather than stay trapped inside one hot theme. Schlumberger acquires ChampionX and Sumitomo acquires EEW Offshore Wind EU Holding show energy buyers still consolidating around scale and infrastructure. BlackRock acquires Preqin brought financial data into the center of a strategic buy thesis. Outbrain acquires Teads and Liberty Media acquires Dorna Sports show media assets moving for reasons that have nothing to do with emergency liquidity.

This matters because the early stage of a recovery often produces a false read. Founders see one active category and assume a narrow fad is driving the year. The 2024 archive suggests something healthier. Different sectors had different reasons to transact, but they were all transacting again. The common denominator was not hype. It was strategic usefulness. Buyers were willing to act where the target improved data control, distribution, installed customer bases or infrastructure density. That is the sort of breadth that turns a market turn from rumor into pattern.

The recovery still favored buyers who could survive review

None of this means 2024 became frictionless. Many of the most instructive deals stayed in review. FNAC DARTY acquires UNIEURO, CARLSBERG acquires BRITVIC, NVIDIA acquires RUN:AI and CAPMAN AIFM acquires KOTIKUITU TARGET ASSETS all came with a regulatory path, not just a commercial pitch. That is another marker of a real rebound. Serious buyers return before easy buyers do, and serious buyers are usually the ones willing to carry review risk when the prize is worth it.

For founders, the lesson is not to confuse an improving market with a short closing path. In recovery years, the process often becomes more active before it becomes more certain. More buyers call. More processes revive. But the best outcomes still go to companies that can help the buyer clear the real hurdles: governance, diligence, change-of-control issues and regulatory timing. In 2024, the market came back, yet it still rewarded companies that could convert buyer interest into buyer confidence.

The pattern

The 2024 pattern is simple. M&A came back first through specificity. Buyers paid attention to software control points, data assets, infrastructure, healthcare distribution and other businesses where the use case was easy to explain. Sponsor activity returned when cash flow and control were clear. Strategic activity returned when a target solved an operating problem the buyer already understood. That is what the first phase of recovery looks like. It is not broad euphoria. It is broadening conviction.

Founder's Lens

Adam J. Graham's read on this year: 2024 is the year I would have wanted founders to stop asking whether the market was back in theory and start asking whether their asset fit the buyers who were back in fact. That distinction matters. A better market does not rescue a weak company, but it does give a strong one more than one credible path. Looking back from 2026, the founders who used 2024 best were the ones who recognised the tone shift early, tightened their materials and met serious buyers before the crowd started talking like the hard part was over.

What it means today

The 2024 lesson still matters in 2026 because every recovery starts with the same temptation: to overread the first good signs. Founders should do the opposite. Use an improving market to create options, not excuses. If buyer conviction is returning in your category, move before the process gets noisy and before sellers start treating the rebound as permanent. For the full archive behind this shift, start with the 2024 archive.