Kimberly-Clark bid to buy Tylenol maker, and other acquisitions push deal boom toward $4 trillion

Dealmakers inked mergers and acquisitions worth more than $80 billion on Monday as they hurtle toward their second-best year on record.
Leading the latest haul is Kimberly-Clark Corp., which has agreed to buy struggling Tylenol maker Kenvue Inc. for roughly $40 billion. Kimberly-Clark said the tie-up would allow it to overtake Unilever Plc and become the second-biggest seller of health and wellness products after Procter & Gamble Co.

Investment bankers have bounced back from a rocky start to 2025 and are now well on course for their best year since 2021, data compiled by Bloomberg show. They’re also set to notch their largest haul of deals worth $30 billion or more, with Wall Street lenders showing a strong willingness to again back the most transformative takeovers.

With two months of the year to run, global deal values stand at $3.8 trillion, according to the Bloomberg-compiled data. That’s about 38% higher than levels at this point in 2024, the data show.

Companies have been transacting at multibillion-dollar amounts across a range of industries, with the artificial intelligence boom being one of the major themes behind the M&A recovery. Eaton Corp. has just agreed to buy liquid cooling specialist Boyd Thermal for $9.5 billion to capitalise on heavy demand related to AI data centres. Starbucks Corp. is selling a majority stake in its China business to private equity firm Boyu Capital at a $4 billion enterprise value.

Meanwhile, there are signs of a dealmaking recovery in the US energy sector, which has been stifled by global trade tensions and lower oil prices this year. Permian Basin explorer SM Energy Co. and Civitas Resources Inc. struck an all-stock deal valuing the merged entity at $12.8 billion, including debt; and BP Plc said it will divest stakes in US shale assets to Sixth Street for $1.5 billion as it seeks to shore up its balance sheet.

In the Asia Pacific, Eni SpA and Petroliam Nasional Bhd reached a binding agreement to combine upstream assets in Indonesia and Malaysia. They plan to invest more than $15 billion over the next five years in gas projects in those countries. Elsewhere in the region, China’s largest oil refiner Sinopec Group is in discussions to take over the nation’s dominant distributor of jet fuel, people familiar with the matter said.

Also on Monday, Coeur Mining Inc. announced a deal to buy New Gold Inc. for about $7 billion and consolidate two midsize North American gold producers amid rising investor interest in the sector.

To be sure, the number of deals announced in 2025 has remained stubbornly flat — a sign that barriers linked to trade and geopolitics remain in place — increasing competition for mandates. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is the top adviser on deals globally, data compiled by Bloomberg show. It’s worked on more than $1 trillion worth of transactions this year — a figure that could yet rise to be an annual record for the firm.

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