On May 13th, the IENYC Finance Club hosted “Cross-Border Transactions in a More Fragmented World.” The event brought together professionals from across New York’s finance industry to discuss how M&A is changing.
We followed up with some of them afterward to find out what these changes look like in practice: Philipp Krohn, CEO of Alantra Investment Banking; Jake Foley, VP at Tungsten Advisors and former managing director at Houlihan Lokey; and Peyton Bowman, M&A director at Sax LLP.
Talk to Jake Foley about the current market, and the answer always comes back to how fast everything is moving.
“What’s different this time is the speed at which uncertainty is racing at people,” he said. “The efficient market hypothesis is being tested radically and aggressively. It’s changing how we go to market as professionals in banking, investing, advisory and value assessment.”
Speed has a way of making previously solid ground feel less stable. Assumptions used in last quarter’s deal models may no longer hold today. Regulatory timelines that once felt predictable have become harder to estimate. Buyers and sellers who were once decisive are taking longer to get comfortable. Some are walking away from situations they would’ve pursued before.
The numbers reflect that. Cross-border deals made up about 30% of global M&A value in 2024, according to BCG’s 2025 M&A Report, down from half at their peak in 2007. Deals are still getting done. They’re just harder to put together.
But Foley’s read is less pessimistic than it may seem. “The greatest insight and value add any of us can provide happens not in familiar environments, but in unknown ones that we have to sort out,” he said. Fragmentation, in other words, is where financial advisors show their value.
Cross-border deals have always involved moving parts. What’s changed is how many of those parts are moving at the same time. Philipp Krohn has felt that directly in how his teams at Alantra operate.
“The biggest single shift we had to make is working in an even more integrated way than before to address the challenges our clients face,” he said. “It’s very important that teams work together to address different aspects of broader cross-border deals: both the financing and the regulatory aspects, which have become increasingly important.”
That has changed how firms structure advisory work. Regulatory risk used to be something you flagged and handed to specialists. But now, it’s more likely to be a changing variable that can affect a deal at any stage. That means firms have to integrate the financing and regulatory sides of a transaction from the start.
That level of coordination requires teams built for it. Analysts handling different parts of a deal need a clear separation of responsibilities. They also need enough overlap that neither side works in isolation. Internal coherence keeps a transaction on track when the regulatory picture can shift mid-deal.
When large cross-border deals stall, activity shifts. In a fragmented market, where large transactions are taking longer to close and buyers are more cautious, the mid-market is becoming increasingly active.
The data supports that. Cross-border deals accounted for 39% of all mid-market M&A in 2025, up from 33% in 2024, according to the Moore Global Cross-border Mid-market M&A Compass.
Peyton Bowman, who works in that space day-to-day, is experiencing it firsthand.
When asked what he’s seeing in the mid-market right now that people working on larger transactions would be surprised by, he said that “the first thing that comes to mind is deal volume and the amount of opportunity there is. There’s massive opportunity to identify good management teams and operators and bring them under the hood into a portfolio company.”
The people capturing that volume are already in the market and moving quickly. In a fragmented environment, where conditions change fast, being able to assess a deal and get to a good position early is a powerful advantage.
The harder question is which ones to pursue and how to assess and approach risk. “One of the mistakes that I see is saying no too soon to a deal without having the facts,” he added. “There’s always risk involved with any deal. It’s important to quantify those risks, think about ways around them, and look at the overall deal, structure, valuation, operational risk and opportunity and figure out ways to integrate it all.”
That requires a willingness to stay with a deal long enough to actually understand it. Getting an answer that allows you to properly quantify risk takes longer than a quick no. But in a market this active, it’s often where the value is.
Fragmentation hasn’t closed off opportunities in cross-border M&A. In the mid-market, it’s opened up more.
None of the panelists offered a forecast for where markets are heading. Instead, they shared observations about what the work demands from people entering finance right now.
The picture that emerged was one that rewards people who are comfortable with complexity and understand that the conditions most likely to feel like obstacles are often the same ones that make good financial work most valuable.
Across all three panelists, the same two skills kept coming up. One is working across functions without losing sight of the deal as a whole. The other is staying with a difficult deal long enough to see where its real risks show up.
For the professionals on the panel, fragmentation is the environment they’re working in now, and the one they’re hiring for.
If you’re aiming for a career in M&A or corporate finance, the MS in Finance at IENYC puts you in conversations like this one with the advisors doing these deals in New York.
Cross-border M&A is a merger or acquisition where the buyer and the target company are based in different countries. Cross-border deals carry risks that domestic transactions don’t, including foreign investment reviews, currency fluctuations, differing tax and accounting rules, and the challenge of integrating teams across legal systems.
Cross-border M&A fell from about 50% of global deal value in 2007 to roughly 30% in 2024, according to BCG. Stricter foreign investment screening, trade tensions and longer regulatory reviews have made international deals slower and harder to complete than domestic ones.
Regulatory approval and post-deal integration are the biggest risks in a cross-border acquisition. Antitrust and foreign investment reviews can delay or block a deal, and currency moves can shift the price. After closing, differences in management culture and operations often slow integration. Advisors reduce these risks by bringing regulatory specialists in from the start.
M&A roles need strong financial modeling, valuation and due diligence skills, along with the judgment to weigh risk. In cross-border M&A, advisors also need to understand how regulation affects a deal and work closely with legal, tax and financing specialists. Clear communication with clients matters at every level.
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Emma is a writer, translator, linguist and editor from Washington, DC, USA. Her career has taken her from social media management to copywriting, inventory buying for a major retail chain, events management and even teaching.
Emma received a B.S. in Business Administration with a concentration in marketing and a minor in French from Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA. During that time, she studied abroad in York, England and Rennes, France, where she developed an interest in cross-cultural communication and linguistics. After relocating to Madrid, Spain, she began specializing in writing, focusing on topics like travel, marketing and culture.
Currently, Emma works full-time for IE University’s narrative team. In her free time, she enjoys reading, hiking and exploring the city.
