The mid-market is not a single story. There is the founder who spent thirty years building something and is now deciding what comes next. There is the family business that quietly became the leader in its category without anyone outside the industry noticing. And a growing number have outgrown the boundaries once associated with the mid-market — competing for capital on a global stage, expanding across borders, and transacting with some of the world’s largest institutions. What connects all of it is not size but ambition: the conviction that a business, however it started, can become something larger than where it began.
We have never thought of our work as simply closing transactions. A transaction is a moment. What we are actually asked to do is harder and slower: to help someone move from what their business is today to what it needs to become — for a buyer, for a successor, or for a future they may not fully see yet themselves.
That work has grown sharper, not easier. Capital is available, but it is increasingly selective. Buyers are looking beyond the story a business can tell to the evidence beneath it: how resilient the business is, how repeatable its performance is, how credible its growth prospects are, and how well it can withstand scrutiny. The businesses that achieve the best outcomes are the ones that have been building toward that moment long before it arrives.
Every entry in our Dealbook reflects that journey at a different scale — a different sector, a different country, a different set of ambitions. On their own, they are transactions. Taken together, they are a record of what disciplined businesses — well prepared, well guided — can achieve.
It is to our clients, who did the work long before any of us sat down at the table, that we dedicate this publication.
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Jurgis V. Oniunas
IMAP Chairman
At the start of the year, the outlook for Q1 was highly optimistic, with expectations of slowing inflation, lower interest rates, and improving growth projections. Unfortunately, we live in interesting times. Early in the year, speculation around the disruptive impact of AI on traditional SaaS business models triggered a significant revaluation in parts of the Software sector. More recently, escalation in the Middle East conflict has introduced fresh volatility – pushing oil prices higher, adding upward pressure on inflation, and creating supply-chain uncertainties. While it is too early to tell how these new shocks will eventually affect the global M&A market, we can be sure that our dealmakers around the world are on the ground every day – negotiating, re-evaluating, adjusting positions, and adapting to whatever the environment throws at them to deliver the best outcomes for their clients. They’ve done it for over 50 years, and that’s exactly what they’ll continue to do, no matter the conditions.
