Sharing Excellence – Stimulate Exchange: Make Better Deals
On 8 October 2025, around 200 guests from business, academia, advisory and politics gathered in Berlin for the M&A Award Night, hosted by the German M&A Association and M&A REVIEW.
On 8 October 2025, around 200 guests from business, academia, advisory and politics gathered in Berlin for the M&A Award Night, hosted by the German M&A Association and M&A REVIEW. Organised by mandaco and held at the TIPI by the Chancellery, the evening brought together the German M&A community to recognise transactions, advisers and entrepreneurs whose work demonstrates how dealmaking can contribute to innovation, transformation and long-term value creation.
The event showed that M&A is far more than a technical transaction discipline. It is one of the central instruments through which companies reshape portfolios, access capabilities, accelerate innovation and respond to strategic change. This message was underlined by Federal Minister Dorothee Bär, who emphasised the importance of bringing talent, ideas and technologies together if economies are to remain innovative and competitive. In this sense, M&A is not only about ownership change; it is also a mechanism through which ideas, technologies and capabilities move across organisational boundaries.
In his opening remarks, Jan Pörschmann, Chairman of the German M&A Association, placed the evening in the wider context of structural transformation. Markets are changing faster, technological disruption is accelerating, and companies are under pressure to adapt in shorter strategic cycles. Against this backdrop, M&A becomes a leadership challenge that brings together strategy, financing, legal structuring, tax, culture and integration. It is therefore not surprising that outstanding dealmaking requires more than transaction execution. It requires judgement, responsibility and the ability to translate strategic intent into post-deal value creation.
A distinctive feature of the Awards is their assessment approach. The Advisory Awards are based on a scientific model developed in collaboration with the University of Bristol, combining qualitative dimensions such as client orientation and advisory approach with quantitative transaction outcomes. This creates a more rounded view of advisory excellence and moves the discussion beyond deal volume alone. In 2025, winners included Schalast and Taylor Wessing in Legal Advisory, KPMG Germany in Transaction Advisory and RSM Ebner Stolz in M&A Advisory, with Benchmark International also recognised.
The Corporate Awards highlighted the breadth of M&A as a strategic instrument. Recognised transactions included deals involving Körber, Jungheinrich, sennder, Deutsche Bahn, TRUMPF & Q.ANT, Polifarma and AL-KO. What connected these cases was not size alone, but the quality of the underlying strategic logic, the relevance of the transaction for transformation and growth, and the ability to manage complexity responsibly. The Lifetime Achievement Award, presented to Max H.-H. Schaber, founder and long-serving CEO of DATAGROUP, further emphasised the entrepreneurial dimension of M&A: growth through acquisitions can be highly successful when it is built on trust, fairness, discipline and a clear understanding of value creation.
After four successful years in Germany, the next step is Bristol.
In 2027, the M&A Awards will make their UK debut at the University of Bristol. The ambition is not simply to replicate an established German format, but to build a dedicated UK platform that reflects the specific character, strengths and challenges of the UK M&A market. The inaugural UK edition will be closely connected to the University of Bristol M&A Observatory and M&A REVIEW UK, combining practitioner insight with evidence-based assessment and academic independence.
This Bristol-based approach will place particular emphasis on what sits behind successful transactions: strategic clarity, quality of judgement, execution discipline, integration logic and long-term value creation. Financial outcomes matter, but they do not tell the full story. The UK M&A Awards will therefore seek to recognise not only completed deals, but the managerial and advisory capabilities that make high-impact dealmaking possible.
For the University of Bristol M&A Observatory, the Awards form part of a wider mission: to connect research, market intelligence and practitioner exchange in a way that strengthens the UK M&A ecosystem. Bristol offers a distinctive setting for this ambition. As a leading university with a growing profile in strategy, corporate transformation and M&A research, it can provide an institutional home for an awards format that is rigorous, practice-facing and outward-looking.
The UK launch also creates an opportunity for corporates, private equity investors, advisers and entrepreneurs to help shape a new conversation about M&A excellence. What does responsible dealmaking look like in the UK context? How do companies create sustainable value through acquisitions? Which advisory practices genuinely improve transaction quality? And how can evidence, experience and judgement be brought together more effectively?
The M&A Awards in Bristol will provide a platform to explore these questions — and to celebrate the people and organisations that are answering them through their work.
