As a Nor’easter made its way up the East coast last week, the H/Advisors Abernathy team braved the weather conditions and attended the 2025 Kayo M&A Summit, part of Kayo’s 12^th annual women in private equity series. This year’s Summit brought together dealmakers across private equity, banking, law, communications and more to exchange ideas and discuss the trends shaping dealmaking in today’s environment.

While many viewpoints rang true for our team, one in particular stood out: with uncertainty being the new normal, companies must plan carefully like never before for various scenarios when it comes to M&A, even in the private sector. As highlighted by Blair and her co-panelists during the plenary panel on M&A, we are operating in a rapidly changing macro and political environment and despite the many expert opinions in the room, no one knows how 2025 will come to a close or what 2026 will bring. Given this “new normal,” here are a few takeaways that GPs should consider when preparing for a deal announcement:

• Scenario plan for all potential outcomes. With chaos pervasive, companies and sponsors must control what they can but also expect the unexpected. Politics and business are increasingly intertwined, and deal scrutiny today often goes beyond standard regulatory reviews, with D.C. policymakers or influential voices adjacent to the Administration commenting on deals, markets and key players – and at times leveraging this soft power to shape outcomes and reach policy goals. Even smaller deals in sectors that don’t impact national security, which historically carry less regulatory risk, could now become front-page news. In addition, H/Advisors data suggests that deals – especially large, high-profile deals – are leaking earlier in the deal process, on average almost 60 days prior to announcement. Companies and sponsors need to have a “break glass” plan in place for if and when a deal leaks to maintain control of the narrative and preserve the negotiation process.

• Tailored messaging reigns supreme. M&A transactions are often the highest profile events for companies, especially those in the middle market. This requires careful communications planning: tight, strategic messaging is essential. On the sponsor front, deal announcements provide an increased opportunity to position private equity firms beyond just the financial rationale – by discussing being strong stewards, builders and long-term strategic partners for management teams. We’ve seen an increase in firms using deal announcements to try and shift a trend in negative narratives around PE by focusing on partnership models and the value sponsor firms bring to their investments. This is all the more important in certain sectors, like healthcare, where consumer trust is low and regulatory scrutiny is high.

• Sometimes less is more. The traditional wisdom of using announcement day to make a “big splash” can still be the right approach for certain deals, but it isn’t the one-size-fits all approach that it once was. In today’s operating environment, it is imperative that companies and sponsors develop a thoughtful announcement day strategy that ensures the transaction resonates with key stakeholders but also minimizes regulatory risk and unnecessary scrutiny. Sometimes it may be better to have a quieter public announcement to draw less attention to the transaction. In the same vein, there can be a strategic benefit to holding the transaction announcement until closing vs. announcing at signing, in order to minimize regulatory risk in a typically uncertain period for stakeholders.