After a choppy few years, global M&A is finding its stride again. What’s interesting isn’t just that deal volumes are recovering, it’s where they’re concentrating. Across the major 2025 outlooks, four sectors keep showing up as the most prolific or fastest-rising: Technology, Healthcare & Life Sciences, Energy/Infrastructure (especially transition-driven), and Industrials/Business Services.
These aren’t random spikes. Each sector has deep structural tailwinds, the kind that make dealmaking feel less like a cycle and more like a rewiring of the economy. For boutique investment banks, that’s good news: structural change creates niches, and niches are where boutiques win.
Let’s unpack what’s driving each sector, and what it means for specialist advisors.
1) Technology (TMT). Now basically “the AI economy” my favourite subject!
Tech is still the gravitational centre of deal activity. But the story has evolved. The old thesis was “digital transformation.” The new one is “AI transformation + scale.”
Strategic buyers are acquiring to:
- secure AI capabilities (model tooling, workflow automation, applied AI in vertical SaaS),
- own critical infrastructure (data centres, cloud optimisation, semiconductors),
- harden cybersecurity, and
- consolidate fragmented software categories into platforms.
Private equity is equally active, leaning into roll-ups in vertical SaaS and tech-enabled services. The result: steady mid-market volume plus headline megadeals, with AI acting like M&A jet fuel.
The Boutique angle:
Generalist coverage doesn’t cut it here. Winning boutiques build credibility by going deep in sub-verticals like health IT, gov/defence tech, fintech infrastructure, or industrial software. They can speak the language of product-market fit, ARR quality, retention curves, and AI defensibility. In a tech deal, knowing the buyer universe and valuation logic for that niche is the product.
2) Healthcare & Life Sciences – pipelines, aging, and platform building
Healthcare remains one of the most resilient M&A engines worldwide. The drivers are stubbornly durable:
- aging populations expand demand for care and chronic-disease solutions.
- big pharma faces patent cliffs, so acquisitions refill pipelines.
- innovation cycles in biotech, MedTech, diagnostics, and health services keep creating targets.
- PE is platform-building in healthcare services and outsourced pharma/clinical infrastructure.
2025 outlooks highlight healthcare deal sentiment as among the strongest globally, even with policy noise and reimbursement risk.
The Boutique angle:
This sector rewards advisors who understand regulatory reality and clinical math, not just Excel math. A boutique that specialises in, say, MedTech or pharma services can add real value by:
- vetting clinical differentiation and trial rising
- positioning reimbursement or pricing stories,
- mapping strategic buyers by therapeutic area, and
- running tight, confidential processes for founder-led companies.
The largest banks dominate mega-pharma deals. But mid-market health services, specialty biotech, diagnostics, and HCIT are ideal boutique territory.
3) Energy, Power & Infrastructure – transition meets security
Think of this as the “two-track” M&A boom: energy transition and energy security happening in parallel.
Deal activity is being driven by:
- global investment into renewables and storage,
- grid modernisation and electrification (transmission, smart-grid tech),
- consolidation in traditional energy (LNG, oil & gas scale plays), and
- infrastructure funds buying long-duration real assets.
Even where volumes wobble, deal values are rising as assets get larger and more strategic.
The Boutique angle:
Energy/infrastructure deals are technical and relationship dense. Boutiques can win by anchoring in a narrow lane:
- renewable project platforms,
- grid & electrification supply chains,
- energy software/optimisation,
- midstream and LNG infrastructure, or
- sustainability-linked industrial services.
Specialists who understand contract structures, project finance logic, and the regulatory landscape become unusually “sticky” advisors. Big banks are great at scale. Boutiques are great at ‘fit’.
4) Industrials & Business Services – automation, defence, and supply-chain redesign
Industrials may sound boring until you notice they’re at the heart of three big trends:
- Automation / advanced manufacturing
- Defence and aerospace re-armament
- Supply-chain resilience and near-shoring
Companies are buying tech-enabled manufacturing capabilities, specialised engineering, logistics platforms, and defence-linked production. Outlooks for 2025 flag industrials/services as a key growth lane, particularly where energy transition and advanced manufacturing overlap.
The Boutique angle:
Industrials is a perfect boutique playground because it’s fragmented. Many categories are full of founder-owned, regionally-strong companies. The winning formula is:
pick a sub-sector (specialty engineering, A&D supply chains, automation integrators, logistics tech, etc.),
- build a proprietary buyer map,
- understand operational KPIs that matter (not just EBITDA),
- and become the advisor who can translate a technical business into a strategic narrative.
- Why boutiques can thrive in these niches
The big banks will always own the largest cross-border mega-deals. But the centre of gravity for volume is mid-market and that’s where specialised boutiques have a genuine edge.
Boutiques win when they offer:
1) Real sector knowledge, not “coverage theatre.”
Clients can tell who actually understands their world. Niche credibility shortens sale cycles and improves pricing.
2) A tighter buyer/investor network.
In specialist sectors, knowing the right 30 buyers beats emailing 300. That’s how you create competitive tension.
3) Senior attention and execution.
Mid-market founders care about who’s in the room. Boutiques deliver partner-led processes, not delegate-led ones.
4) Narrative alchemy.
A good boutique doesn’t just run a process, it crafts a story that makes strategic sense in that niche. That’s what moves valuation multiples.
The takeaway
These four sectors aren’t just “hot for now.” They’re riding long-term forces: AI adoption, demographic shifts, decarbonisation + security, and industrial re-platforming. Those forces create steady deal flow and increasingly complex sub-markets.
For boutiques, the play isn’t to be smaller versions of big banks. It’s to be sharper versions of specialists: pick the niche, learn it obsessively, map it better than anyone else, and own it.
In a world where M&A is being driven by structural change, focus isn’t a constraint, it’s a moat.
Written by Amanda Simmons, with data research by AI from the following sources.
Sources: McKinsey & Company. BCG Global. PwC. KPMG.
