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There’s a lot of cash, but fewer deals propelled global fintech to the best year since 2022.

When Global Payments completed its roughly $24.3 billion acquisition of London-based Worldpay in January, it would account for nearly a quarter of all global fintech investment in the five months that followed, according to Big Four auditor KPMG International’s latest Pulse of Fintech report released Monday.

That massive transaction captures the central paradox shaping current fintech funding: total capital is surging, yet it is concentrated in fewer hands.

KPMG crunched the numbers using data from PitchBook, which tracks M&A and venture capital activity. Overall fintech investment surged to $103.1 billion across the six-month period — up from $72.2 billion in the second half of last year — putting the sector on track for its strongest annual performance in four years. Overall deal count, however, dropped to a multi-year low.

Deal Volume Remains Soft

The shift reflects a strong preference for mature fintechs with proven track records over higher-risk, early-stage startups.

As a result, global deal volume dropped to just 2,100 transactions in the first half of the year. That’s down from 2,501 in the prior six-month period (the last six months of 2025). Instead of spreading capital across early-stage ventures, investors funneled funds into late-stage blockbuster deals.

Ten deals worth $1 billion or more closed during the period. In addition to buying WorldPay, Global Payments Inc. found itself on the sell side. The Atlanta-based company sold its issuer solutions business, Total System Services (TSYS), to Fidelity National Information Services Inc. for $13.5 billion — also in January.

Among the other megadeals of 2026, thus far, are the $8.4 billion buyout of Clearwater Analytics and the $6.4 billion take-private of OneStream. In Europe, Denmark’s Saxo Bank was acquired for $1.2 billion, and Belgium’s Kpler Holding landed a private equity growth equity investment of over $1 billion from global investment firm Sixth Street Partners in June.

How Luca Ferrari’s permanent-capital model is transforming distressed digital brands.

Is it a private equity group with a twist? An “emergency room for critically injured tech companies,” as it was described by the Financial Times? Or is it simply a modern tech conglomerate?

How do you categorize a company that buys aging technology and digital brands—brand names like AOL, Vimeo, Eventbrite, WeTransfer, and more recently, Airtable—far below their peak value, overhauls and radically transforms them with a drastic turnaround, and then keeps them under the same umbrella to invest their profits in new acquisitions?

What it is, is a buy-and-hold investment and management company.

Bending Spoons SpA, an Italian company created in 2013 and recently listed on the Nasdaq, raised $1.68 billion with a total valuation of $18.4 billion and a current market value of $23 billion, and marked a 40% pop on its trading debut. For the second quarter, it reported $704 million in revenue and $177 million in net income, up 126% and 171%, respectively, from the second quarter of 2025.

It follows a highly unusual business model: buying distressed tech companies—or tattered internet businesses—at relatively low valuations, fixing them up through layoffs and reorganization, and then holding them rather than spinning them off or selling them separately to the market, as private equity groups typically do.

Bending Spoons has executed this strategy some 50 times since its creation. Funding for its activities comes from debt and from the profits of the acquired companies: the same ones it bought at low valuations, with seemingly no competition to acquire the brand.

All this was achieved as revenues increased fourfold from $387 million in 2023 to $1.3 billion last year, during which period it made 70% of its acquisitions. Ownership’s financial goal is an annualized return of 25% on invested capital, built on operational earnings alone rather than divestments, synergies between different acquisitions, or headcount reductions.

Meanwhile, debt, which financed 70% of the acquisitions that Bending Spoons made in the first quarter of this year, continues to pile up. In the last reported quarter, total debt was more than four times annualized EBITDA: hovering, in other words, between $4.3 billion and $4.4 billion, with a net debt of nearly $3.7 billion. The Canadian company Constellation Software Inc. has a similar business model, but carries less debt on its books, while Barry Diller’s People Inc.—formerly IAC Inc.—has followed a similar business model.

Luca Ferrari, CEO and one of four co-founders of Bending Spoons, described the model as a “deep transformation” because the acquired brands do not just go through layoffs but undergo radical structural reconstruction. The company’s name, an homage to the movie The Matrix, reflects the founders’ belief that mindset can transform reality, fueling their goal to achieve milestones that others might deem impossible.

In the prospectus for its Nasdaq listing, Bending Spoons mentions 1,000 potential targets. Its latest acquisition, announced this month, is Airtable, a “collaborative work management” software company, for $1.29 billion in cash. That represents a nearly 90% discount over Airtable’s highest valuation in 2021.

“The thesis of what we do,” Ferrari said, “is to integrate these companies very deeply onto our platform and rebuild them almost from the ground up: the technology, the product, the monetization, and big parts of the team. If we don’t see that we can make a big difference, we don’t expect to be able to make an appealing offer.”

A ‘Permanent-Capital Operator In A Tech Wrapper‘

Bending Spoons is not really a tech company, said Chelsea Michelle, founder of Elevated Business Advisors, who advises founders and family offices on capital strategy and acquisitions: “It is a permanent-capital operator wearing a tech wrapper, and the refusal to sell is the most important line in the model.

“Traditional private equity must manage every acquisition toward an exit multiple, which means dressing assets up for the next buyer. When you never plan to sell, you can optimize purely for cash generation and ignore the story entirely. That is a structural advantage, not a stylistic one.

“The model works because aging digital brands are systematically mispriced; sellers value them on declining top-line while a buyer at Bending Spoons’ scale values durable user bases that cost almost nothing to serve. The real risk is not the buying; it is the integrating. Most acquisitions fail to deliver expected value, and a serial acquirer that holds everything forever has nowhere to hide a bad integration. The integration discipline, not their deal flow, is what investors should watch after the Nasdaq listing.”

In a recent article in Barron’s, Henry Ellenbogen, CIO and managing partner of Durable Capital Partners and an investor in Bending Spoons before the IPO, pointed out an interesting angle on the company’s performance.

“When we first invested, Bending Spoons was making under $500,000 of EBITDA per Spooner, or employee,” he wrote. “Today, EBITDA is more than $1 million per Spooner. That speaks to the investment the company is making in the technology businesses it buys.

“Bending Spoons is centralized. Evernote [a company it acquired in 2023] has fewer than 20 people at the application level. We believe Bending Spoons’ revenue and EBITDA per employee will continue to compound, allowing the company to drive better organic growth and strong operating leverage. The market’s concern about software companies should allow management to buy higher-quality companies that fit its model at attractive prices.”

Currently, only 9% of shares in the company are available for trading, and the owners control the rest with a dual-class share mechanism.

On Wall Street these days, Bending Spoons’ stock gets four hold recommendations from analysts, one overweight, and six buy, but most of the banks it works with were involved in the IPO. Job applications are also strong; 99.9% of the 800,000 applicants for jobs as Spooners—the people running the acquired companies—were rejected.

Beyond the optimism about the stock’s performance and the company’s unusual business model, the future of Bending Spoons is tied to its long-term performance rather than its short- and medium-term performance, and whether its business model can and will be replicated. Time will tell.

Andrea Fiano is the editor-at-large. Contact him at afiano@gfmag.com.

The Bermuda bank agrees to buy a 91.7% stake in CIBC Caribbean Bank for $1.8 billion, creating a regional giant.

This article appears in the July/August issue of Global Finance Magazine.

Butterfield Group has agreed to acquire a 91.7% stake in CIBC Caribbean Bank Limited for $1.8 billion — $1.09 billion in cash and the remainder in shares — in a deal that would create one of the region’s largest banking groups.

This is at least the third time in the past seven years that the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) has attempted to sell some of its Caribbean interests.

“This deal combines two storied, complementary banks with significant local scale advantages and time-honored customer relationships in their respective core jurisdictions,” said Michael Collins, Butterfield’s chairman and chief executive, in a statement. 

The new banking group will hold an estimated $29 billion in assets. The Bermuda-based Butterfield Group—formerly The Bank of N.T. Butterfield & Son Limited—also operates in The Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, the Channel Islands, Singapore, Switzerland, and the U.K. CIBC has a presence in 10 countries and is based in Barbados.

CIBC will hold about 22% of the enlarged Butterfield Group and will have the right to appoint two directors to the board. 

The bank’s top brass says the deal underscores a shift in the Caribbean financial sector. 

“This is really a change in Butterfield’s positioning because it now picks up both a retail and a business portfolio that spans the entire gamut of the region, and it probably could make it the biggest bank in the region,” former Butterfield CEO Mariano Browne told the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian.

Butterfield has promised to maintain CIBC’s Barbados office. Customers should expect no immediate changes. Existing branches will remain open, and clients can expect improved cross-border payments and expanded consumer, digital, and merchant banking.

The deal, pending regulatory approval, should close in the first half of 2027.

In 2018, CIBC attempted to list FirstCaribbean on U.S. stock markets to raise up to $240 million but withdrew the application less than a month later after failing to drum up sufficient investor interest. A 2019 deal to sell 66.7% of CIBC to GNB Financial Group for $797 million fell through after the deal failed to secure regulatory approval.

Nic Wirtz is a contributing writer based in Guatemala.

Breaking a six-month record, the investment banking giant capitalizes on a surging wave of global megadeals.

Goldman Sachs said it had advised on more than $1 trillion of announced global mergers and acquisitions so far this year, the fastest any investment bank has reached that milestone in a six-month period, citing data from capital markets data provider Dealogic.

The bank attributed the milestone to a string of marquee mandates, including serving as co-financial adviser to Dominion Energy on its roughly $67 billion sale to rival utility NextEra Energy, announced last month, along with other major transactions.

Rise of the Megadeal

Goldman reported that its investment banking fees rose 48%, to $2.8 billion in the first quarter. It’s a reflection of the “K-shaped” M&A market, where megadeals are the dominant force, but deal volumes are declining, and mid-market activity is subdued. 

Data compiled by PwC revealed that the global M&A market is on track to reach $4 trillion in 2026, a 13% annual increase, with major sales estimated to account for 48% of deal value worldwide, a significant expansion from two years ago. 

“Goldman has been the global leader in M&A advisory fees for more than 90 consecutive quarters. The fact that it’s reaping benefits from a moment of megadeal activity simply proves the strength of its franchise,” said Mark Narron, senior director at Fitch Ratings. “However, advisory revenues are generally a small share of total revenues. In 2021, which was Goldman’s record year for advisory, advisory revenues contributed only 10% of total revenues.” 

Fitch says it’s difficult to forecast whether Goldman’s advisory revenues will continue to climb, given the cyclical nature of advisory fees and uneven regional M&A trends — with most deal activity still concentrated in the U.S.

Fitch expects M&A activity to be sensitive to market conditions, economic growth, geopolitical events, and interest rates. Global growth is estimated to decelerate to 2.8% this year, according to the latest OECD economic outlook report. Inflationary pressures are rising in advanced and emerging economies due to energy shocks from the Iran conflict. Prices in the G20 economies are expected to climb to 4% in 2026. In a “prolonged disruption” scenario, inflation could rise further, which may prompt hawkish interest rate responses from central banks.

Peter Taberner is a contributing writer based in the U.K.

Value up, volume down — megadeals carry record-chasing M&A market through a year of geopolitical turmoil.

Global mergers and acquisitions are on track to reach roughly $4 trillion in total value in 2026. That’s up 13% from 2025 — only the second-highest spike to the pandemic-era peak of 2021 — that figure obscures a market increasingly defined by a handful of blockbuster transactions.

Deal volume data from PwC and LSEG projects an estimated 42,000 transactions for the full year, down 13% from 2025. Megadeals exceeding $5 billion account for roughly 48% of global deal value — up from 39% in 2025 and just 26% in 2024. Remove them from the equation, and overall deal value falls 4% year over year.

Headwinds likely stymied deal activity in specific sectors. The U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran, launched in late February, caused what the International Energy Agency called the largest oil supply disruption in the history of the global oil market, sending energy prices sharply higher.

Despite the recent U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the conflict cast a pall over deal activity for much of the first half of the year, particularly for transactions with any exposure to energy, logistics, or the Gulf region.

Geographic Picture Remains Uneven

The U.S. has expanded its dominance, commanding 63% of global deal value in the first half of 2026, up from 54% a year earlier, even as deal volumes fell, according to Dealogic.

Europe’s share of value also increased by 88% ($733.6 billion), buoyed by large individual transactions. The Middle East and Africa, together, saw a 45% increase in deal value ($61.3 billion).

Asia Pacific moved in the opposite direction: its share of global deal value dropped to 29% — reflecting fewer megadeals and smaller average transaction sizes relative to the U.S. and EMEA.

On the advisory side, Goldman Sachs is leading the rankings by a wide margin — $1.161 trillion in deal value across more than 200 transactions so far this year. Among the firm’s marquee assignments: advising Dominion Energy on its $66.8 billion sale to NextEra Energy, counseling Unilever on its planned $65 billion food business merger with McCormick & Company, and serving as lead-left underwriter on the SpaceX IPO.

JPMorgan ranks second with $743 billion, up from $557.1 billion a year earlier — a performance the bank has attributed in part to M&A fees that nearly doubled year over year in the first quarter of 2026. Morgan Stanley rounds out the top three at $622.5 billion.

Anthony Noto covers corporate finance and private credit. Contact him at anoto@gfmag.com

The bank names former Dream Sports executive and investment banker Raj Rathi to lead M&A business in India.

Citigroup Inc. has appointed veteran investment banker Raj Rathi as its new head of mergers and acquisitions in India, effective this month. The appointment comes as Citi deepens its advisory capabilities to capture opportunities in the Asian market.

Rathi’s hiring follows several high-profile additions to the bank’s regional investment banking team. Citi recently lured Bhavin Shukla from JPMorgan Chase & Co. to serve as managing director and head of Infrastructure Investment Banking for Japan, North and South Asia, and Australia. Last year, Citi hired Vikram Chavali from Goldman Sachs Group as its Asia-Pacific head of Global Asset Managers.

From Fantasy to Finance

Rathi was hired from Dream Sports, the multibillion-dollar parent company of fantasy gaming giant Dream11, where he served as head of Strategy and Corporate Development and oversaw the deployment of about $150 million across multiple strategic transactions.

Citi’s moves underscore a trend in which global banks are recruiting seasoned corporate executives to navigate complex digital infrastructure, the energy transition, and cross-border capital flows. Its recent high-profile transactions in the region include advising United Spirits Ltd. on the sale of its 100% stake in the Royal Challengers Bengaluru cricket team and steering Chinese appliance giant Haier Group through the sale of its 49% stake in Haier India to a consortium backed by Bharti Enterprises and Warburg Pincus.

Before his corporate development role at Dream Sports, Rathi spent five years as an executive director at J.P. Morgan, focusing on technology investment banking. He covered the technology, fintech, and consumer internet sectors, executing deals totaling about $35 billion in transaction value.

His career also included positions at Guggenheim Partners and Guggenheim Securities’ investment banking division, as well as at Ernst & Young, where he focused on financial due diligence and transaction advisory services for institutional clients, following early corporate development experience at Sutherland.

This article appears in the June 2026 issue of Global Finance Magazine.