Key trends include:

• Mergers and acquisitions in the industrial sector have rebounded after a period of great uncertainty in 2022 and 2023. The macroeconomic environment has improved considerably with cost and wage inflation flattening and material supply chain disruption dissipating.
• At the same time, many industrial companies have had to reconsider their manufacturing strategies, given the increasing impact of technology and innovation. Equally, many have been reshoring the production operation, bringing back their manufacturing capabilities to home countries.
• The chemicals sector, meanwhile, is always subject to change. It is almost at the behest of geopolitical movements, whilst energy prices, shipping costs and supply chain disruptions always have an impact. At the same time chemicals producers are having to manage the move towards environmentally-friendly products, as ESG pressures increase all of the time.
• As a result, mergers and acquisitions (M&A) is becoming a commonly used tool to mitigate any downturns. Around 20% of the sector has changed ownership in the past decade, which means that M&A is most certainly a real driver for change.