A review of typical cases where stocks achieved significant excess returns following the disclosure of M&A and restructuring announcements in 2025 reveals that the market tends to assign positive valuations to the following three categories of deals: traditional industries transitioning to new productive forces, new productive forces industries strengthening and supplementing their supply chains, and ST stocks achieving a turnaround through changes in control.
In 2025, supported by policies and a recovering market, the M&A and restructuring market remained highly active, with deal scale reaching a new high since 2022. As a key channel for resource integration under the high-quality development paradigm, M&A activity was further stimulated by policy support, exemplified by the "Six M&A Guidelines" issued on September 24, 2024. With the capital market's continued recovery and accelerated corporate transformations in 2025, M&A activity intensified further. There were 1,527 M&A and restructuring deals initiated by A-share listed companies as acquirers in 2025, involving a total scale of 10,158 billion yuan, setting a new record since 2022 and representing an increase of 119 deals and 1,678 billion yuan compared to the previous year. The pace of corporate M&A accelerated in the second half of 2025, with 665 deals in H1 and 862 deals in H2, involving scales of 4,174 billion yuan and 5,984 billion yuan, respectively.
In terms of industries, M&A and restructuring cases among A-share listed companies in 2025 were primarily concentrated in new productive forces industries, while some traditional industries contributed large-scale deals. Industries with a high number of deals included chemicals, electronics, pharmaceuticals, machinery equipment, power equipment, automobiles, and computers, most of which are new productive forces sectors, highlighting that strengthening and supplementing supply chains has become a core theme in the M&A market driven by new productive forces. Traditional industries such as coal, utilities, transportation, and non-ferrous metals mainly contributed large-scale transactions. Compared to 2024, industries with a significant increase in the number of deals were concentrated in chemicals, environmental protection, electronics, home appliances, automobiles, and pharmaceuticals, while industries with a notable rise in deal scale were mainly coal, utilities, transportation, electronics, chemicals, and non-ferrous metals.
Regarding corporate ownership, the value proportion of M&A deals involving non-state-owned and non-central state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs) increased significantly in 2025 compared to 2024, while their share of the total number of deals remained relatively stable. From 2024 to 2025, the proportion of M&A deals by non-SOE listed companies was essentially stable at 63.7% and 64.5%, respectively; however, their share of the total deal value jumped from 23.5% to 37.2%, further indicating a trend of market penetration and increased activity at more grassroots levels in 2025. By industry, M&A in traditional sectors was dominated by state-owned and central state-owned enterprises (SOEs), while new productive forces industries were led by non-SOEs. In 2025, traditional industries like coal, banking, steel, utilities, transportation, and petroleum & petrochemicals saw M&A primarily led by SOEs, whereas new productive forces sectors such as computers, electronics, machinery, and pharmaceuticals were dominated by non-SOEs. Therefore, the significant increase in the value share of non-SOEs essentially reflects the heightened activity of M&A within new productive forces industries. In terms of listing boards, the proportion of M&A deals involving companies on the STAR Market and ChiNext (the "Double Innovation" boards) continued to rise. Since 2019, with the accelerated development of new productive forces in China, M&A activity has shown a consistent trend of concentrating on these boards. In 2025, the share of M&A deals from the Double Innovation boards reached 35.69%, an increase of 2.81 percentage points from 2024.
In terms of the nature of the mergers, the proportion of cross-industry M&A increased further in 2025. By analyzing the primary and secondary industries of both the acquirer and the target, deals where both the primary and secondary industries were identical were defined as horizontal mergers, while those where both levels differed were defined as cross-industry mergers. The proportion of cross-industry M&A reached 56.31% in 2025, up 6.2 percentage points from 2024. By industry, sectors like steel, electrical equipment, construction, transportation, pharmaceuticals, and food & beverage had a relatively high proportion of horizontal mergers, while petroleum & petrochemicals, paper, building materials, coal, and consumer durables saw a higher proportion of cross-industry deals. However, most cross-industry cases in 2025 pertained to resource integration within industrial chains (including M&A within traditional industry chains and within new productive forces chains), with few instances of traditional industries acquiring new productive forces companies.
From a stock performance perspective, at an industry level, stocks in traditional sectors like petroleum & petrochemicals, utilities, and building decoration, as well as in new productive forces sectors like TMT, automobiles, and defense, generally showed more pronounced excess returns after participating in M&A and restructuring. A further review of top-performing cases in terms of individual stock excess returns following M&A announcements in 2025 indicates the market favors pricing three types of deals positively: traditional industries transforming into new productive forces, new productive forces industries strengthening their supply chains, and ST stocks achieving turnarounds.
Risk Warning: This information is compiled solely from public sources and does not involve research views or investment recommendations.
