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David Solomon, Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, said he is confident that M&A and IPO activity will continue to accelerate in the current environment. Speaking at the ninth edition of the Future Investment Initiative (FII) in Riyadh, he added that he doesn't see compelling evidence of an economic slowdown in the near term.
“Confidence and the regulatory environment have weighed on M&A and IPO activity. No matter where you were operating in the world, if you wanted to do a large, interesting, strategic deal, one of the first questions was: can we? And regardless of the specifics, the answer was generally no. Now, we’re in an environment where the question is still ‘can we?’ but the answer is increasingly ‘maybe’ or even ‘potentially yes.’ That shift is leading CEOs to be much more strategically focused,” Solomon said.
“We're seeing an incredible pickup in M&A activity, and I think that'll carry through in 2026 and into 2027 unless something slows it down. The IPO market is wide open for companies, and the activity is accelerating around the world. Good businesses priced appropriately will do well,” Solomon said.
Goldman Sachs topped the global M&A league tables with over $1 trillion in deal value across the first nine months of 2025. Goldman Sachs led the MENA league table with $104 billion from 24 deals over the first nine months of 2025, according to LSEG Deals Intelligence data.
Goldman Sachs and Saudi sovereign wealth fund PIF have a deep partnership, with PIF acting as an anchor investor in all private credit and public equity funds launched by the US bank focused on Saudi Arabia and the GCC.
When asked whether a slowdown is likely soon, Solomon said: “I don't see a lot of compelling evidence for an economic slowdown in the near term. But the thing about slowdowns, and something important for us all to remember, is that there's always a distribution of possibilities. Confidence can change very quickly, though at the moment, there aren't many obvious events that could trigger that change in the next six to twelve months.”
(Reporting by Seban Scaria; editing by Daniel Luiz)
