Donald Trump Presidency Could Make 2025 a ‘Breakout Year for M&A’ With Deregulation on the Table

Donald Trump‘s return to the White House next year could lead to a new wave of industry consolidation in the media and entertainment biz — and beyond.

A second Trump administration is likely to usher in deregulation and “more aggressive M&A activity,” said Lucinda Guthrie, head of financial data intelligence company Mergermarket. She said 2025 “could be a breakout year for M&A, especially in industries heavily influenced by capital gains tax or regulatory uncertainty.”

One key reason: Trump is widely expected to replace leaders at multiple U.S. regulatory agencies, including FTC chair Lina Khan and Jonathan Kanter, the Justice Department’s antitrust division chief, who have led the Biden administration’s charge in aggressively seeking to thwart major M&A activity and defang the power of large tech companies.

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While the president-elect’s threat of introducing steep 60% tariffs on imports from China could introduce market “volatility,” Guthrie said, “the promise of deregulation and a more activist-friendly SEC might encourage dealmaking and shareholder activism in multiple sectors.”

Stocks climbed higher in early trading Wednesday, as they typically do after U.S. presidential elections. Among leading market indexes, the Dow was up 3.1%, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite rose 2.1% and the S&P 500 was up 1.8%.

The stock market upswing after Trump was declared the winner came “likely on anticipation of stronger domestic growth, increased M&A activity, an extension to personal tax cuts and hopes of lower corporate taxes,” Mark Haefele, UBS’s global wealth management chief investment officer, wrote in a note to clients Wednesday morning. “The prospect of a clear-cut election outcome may also be driving futures higher, given reduced uncertainty about the future.”

Trump’s second term looms as several media players are angling to achieve greater scale through mergers or acquisitions. Those include Warner Bros. Discovery, formed two years ago through the combination of Discovery and WarnerMedia, and Comcast, which last week said it was exploring the possibility of spinning off NBCUniversal‘s cable networks, a move that would position the financially challenged business for M&A.

Earlier this year Warner Bros. Discovery chief David Zaslav said the company would be “opportunistic” about seeking M&A deals in the next two to three years. “I think some companies will be for sale,” he said at an investment conference in May. “I think there’s likely going to be some consolidation. There are a lot of players. There are a lot of players that are losing a lot of money.” 

At the Allen & Co. conference in July, Zaslav said he hoped the next administration will pave the way for industry consolidation, while he declined to specifically endorse a candidate. “We just need an opportunity for deregulation, so companies can consolidate and do what we need to, to be even better,” he said.

The Biden administration “created an environment that made dealmaking more difficult,” Bill Kovacic, a former FTC chair, recently told Variety. “They’ve scared away deals.” Kovacic said he assumes Trump would take a more laissez-faire approach than the Biden White House but added that “if you’re a company he hates, he’s not beyond revenge.”

For large tech companies, Khan’s expected ouster from the FTC would “remove a major overhang” and “be a huge positive” for the sector, Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives wrote in a note Wednesday. “While some believe Trump/Vance would keep Khan, the growing view of the Street is that Khan would be out at the FTC and this could be a huge catalyst for more deal flow in the Big Tech landscape,” according to Ives.

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