Inside the Biggest M&A Deals You Need to Know (Meta, Nebius, UniCredit, Commerzbank)

Hello and welcome back to the Market Maker podcast. We have our normal deals of the week. We'll break down some of the biggest transactions making the headlines this week across sectors like media, financials, and defense. We're then going to have a look at a major AI infrastructure commitment with Meta and Nebbius agreeing to a $27 billion deal and a fresh push in the Commerzbank battle as Unicredit launches a new $28 billion bid for the rest of Commerzbank, turning up the pressure in one of Europe's most politically charged banking takeover fights. And it may even feature Ronaldo in this episode. So stay tuned of which Ronaldo that is. But a quick run through then of some of the deals of the week. Number 1, Bain Capital is acquiring Perpetual's wealth management business for up to an upfront $500 $1 billion with additional contingent payments possible. Strategically, that deal deepens its push into Australia's advice market where private equity sees strong demographic and consolidation tailwinds. That was covered in The Journal last week.

Then next, actually, I just had a, when you had that as a headline, I thought, ah, that's interesting. Like from a wealth management point of view. So often they'll talk about, so with asset management. Right. We talk about assets under management, and then obviously that's a key part of an asset manager's revenue stream because they obviously charge fees on the value of the asset. So this is wealth management, similar but different. So here we talk about funds under advice. And so I was interested, like with Perpetual here, so they've got $21.9 billion worth of FUA, funds under advice. Like that was as of December 31st, 2025. And so I was just thinking from a kind of valuation point of view, because $500 million Aussie dollars, that is, actually I should know, but I don't. What's the exchange rate with the US dollar at the moment? I can't remember. But point is that, you know, what, how does the valuation relate to the funds under advice number? And if it's $500 million divided by 20, basically it's 2.3% of funds under advice is the valuation there. So that's actually quite a common sort of wealth management metric in M&A deals. It's that multiple of valuation to funds under advice. So, and then, 'cause you're thinking about recurring revenue streams here, like it's annual fees. So this actually puts their valuation at 2 to 4 times revenue. So yeah, just from a multiple point of view. Thought it was quite interesting how that kind of plays through relative to the funds under advice figure.

Yeah, I do know that the Perpetual Private, which is the wealth management division of the Perpetual Group, I mean, that goes back to the, I mean, like 1886, something like that. Because whenever I hear about these deals, particularly around the advice market, I do often think about the upstart fintech that kind of marketplace where AI is kind of ripe for a bit of disruption for this wealth advice portion. So yeah, interesting to see them making the move on this. Yeah. But let's jump in. There's 3 or 4 more of these quickfire ones. So the next one is BNP Paribas. The French bank has unveiled a plan to nearly double pre-tax income in its, again, asset management division. And they're aiming at a timeline of 2030. This is following its €5.1 billion acquisition of AXA's money management arm. That strategy focused on asset growth synergies and expanding key distribution partnerships. So is that a simple buy and bolt on to grow sort of scenario?

Yeah. And then with obviously synergies from a kind of cost perspective, but then look, it's about trying to step up and compete. On the global stage. So this actually would put them, combined AUM here would be €1.6 trillion. So BNP Paribas combined AUM, bolting on AXA's AUM, we'll put them at €1.6 trillion, which starts to get them sniffing around the bottom end of the top 10. It would put them, I think I'm right in saying third in the list from a European point of view where you got Amundi, the Irish outfit at $2.3 trillion AUM, and then you've got UBS at $1.7 trillion. So this would park BNP Paribas just under UBS, just around about 10th on that sort of global list.

Cool. And the next one is a bit of a carry-on and something that you are a big advocate for, which is giving European approval to compete with our friends over the pond. And that is the EU have cleared Leonardo's acquisition of Iveco Defence Unit finding no meaningful competition concerns. Any thoughts on that one?

Yeah, it's just, well, it's just obviously the thing is, right, these deals take forever to get to the table. Who knows when they started talking? Obviously this has just been given approval from the EU. So I assume, I actually don't know, but I assume this is like months, months, months, months, months, months. Of talks and negotiations, right? So it's interesting that by the time approval comes, we're now in the middle of a war where, okay, all of a sudden defense stocks and defense companies from a kind of revenue outlook perspective, they're one of the beneficiaries of conflict, of course. So yeah, it's interesting whether that valuation, that $1.7 billion bid, when was that decided and locked in, and our Iveco's sort of board now going, oh, damn it, why did we agree to $1.7 billion? Maybe we could get a little bump on that given what's going on out there geopolitically.

Alright, and then the final one. Canada's investor Stephen Smith has agreed to buy a 26.9% stake in The Economist Group from Lin Forrester de Rothschild's— tongue twister— Forrester de Rothschild's family. Sorry. In a deal that reportedly values the publisher around $1 billion. One thing I did see is we get The Economist delivered here to the office. And do you know how much, if you bought a single issue, physical Economist is?

Oh, well, I mean, pretty much everyone's got it on subscription, haven't they? A one-off, I don't know. £4.

Yeah, it feels like I'm talking to a politician about the price of milk, Piers. You couldn't be further off.

Oh, really? Go on.

Knocking £11.

What?

For one of those little slim magazines. Yeah.

You are kidding.

No.

Wow.

I'm guessing no one pays for The Economist. Their employer pays for it.

Yeah, actually, right, we better check our monthly subscription cost. I might have snuck up on you.

You know what? You definitely should. 'Cause yeah, I couldn't believe it. I saw it. I was like, what, $10.99 per issue?

Geez. Inflation.

Well, I don't know what that is. No, definitely not inflation. That's something else. But all right, well look, let's move on and let's talk about this one, which is Nebbius and Meta have signed a major 5-year AI infrastructure agreement worth up to $20 $7 billion. So, so who, I mean, we know who Meta are, who's this other company and why is it that Meta have struck this agreement with them?

Yeah, I mean, this is, so what's fascinating about this is that this deal is, is basically shows how constrained AI infrastructure still is. I mean, we, we obviously know this is a story that's been just giving and giving for years now. Well, it's still giving. So, You know, Meta, but you know, don't forget Meta, they, they're building their own data centers, right? But even with doing that, they still don't have enough kind of compute capacity. So they're having to go to third parties, which is what Nebbius is, to kind of just buy more. So these are what, these are companies that have been kind of framed neo-cloud providers. And so others would be the likes of CoreWeave, Lambda Labs, basically. And look, they rent GPU superclusters to big tech. That's their role in life. And so all of a sudden, you know, in the last couple of years, they have become super, super interesting for these super tech giants who just need compute capacity like it's going out of fashion. And it's interesting 'cause Nebbius is, it's actually a, when you think about the deal here, which is 12, well, sorry, $27 billion, isn't it? It's, it's $12 billion going towards dedicated AI compute capacity across multiple locations. So that's good diversification from a kind of spreading your risk play. But Meta have also committed to purchase up to another $15 billion of additional available capacity on top, right? This is over 5 years. So 20, keep that figure in mind, $27 billion over 5 years. Nebius's current revenue is just a few hundred million. In fact, it was $228 million.

Was their revenue— we're in the wrong business, Piers. We're in the wrong business.

Full year '25 revenue, $228 million. They've just signed a $27 billion deal. So talk about obviously revenue growth rate, and we're talking now. And so here, when you get a business like this where it's like Nvidia, right? Where the hockey stick revenue growth is just wild and exponentially vertical almost. Well, here we then go into the territory of talking about run rate. So it's revenue run rate, whilst the $228 million is the official figure for the last 12 months. Obviously this is accelerating month on month on month. So we just take the last month and we kind of multiply that by 12 to give the forward-looking revenue runway. So having signed this deal, they're now at basically an $8 billion revenue run rate. So in the next 12 months, they should do $8 billion, even though they only did $228 million. In the previous 12. It's just wildly, unbelievably ridiculous, the sort of growth rate here. But look, this is the world we live in.

Yeah. And I assume that confidence in those numbers is coming from NVIDIA investment. They made a $2 billion strategic investment. You had Microsoft, they also hold just short of $20 billion infrastructure agreement that was signed back in late 2025. So Feels like a bit of a win as well though, for Europe, because we typically tend to talk about this in a North American context, but this is an Amsterdam-based tech company, right? And when we're talking, well, when we talk about the history of it, because it's not that old, but its roots are from somewhere else, right? So what would that be?

Its roots are Yandex, which was, it was, well, I don't know if I, are they still operating? I don't know, but they're Russian-based. Business. And out of the kind of Russia-Ukraine war, kind of US sanctions, this, this Nebius kind of splintered off into Amsterdam and became a kind of hived-off separate entity. So, so yeah, the, the, there's a bit of a geopolitical sort of backstory here, origin story. But, you know, the official line is they are Dutch. And so, yeah, so from a European perspective, absolutely. Yeah, a bit of a coup here. And you said like $17.4 billion was the deal they did with Microsoft. Nvidia deal, which was $2 billion. That was just last week, I think. So they're just signing. I mean, their lawyers and their procurement is just off the scale.

It must be competitive tension, right? You just say, so whilst you're having talks with, like, you're in talks with Nvidia and you're in talks in parallel, they would have already, Microsoft was only 2 months ago.

Yeah.

So they would've been having these discussions all simultaneously.

That's right.

And then just juicing the number as they go.

Everyone needs a piece of their action. Now the problem is the one, like the devil's advocate here is this is a very kind of circular incestuous sort of, or, or, you know, money flow situation where you've got these hyperscalers, Microsoft and Meta. Paying for infrastructure, right? Paying in advance. But then you've also got Nvidia who's supplying Nebius with the chips. 'Cause all of this, one of the deal, I think the kind of side deal with Nvidia was basically that most of this $27 billion, if it gets to that, remember it's $12 billion committed. So most of that's going to go on Vera Rubin AI infrastructure chips from Nvidia. So Nebbius building out its own capacity. So Nvidia's coming along, ooh, I'll stick in a couple of bil here as long as you buy my chips kind of thing. And it's all fine. It's all fine until it's not. It's all fine until, well, I don't know if it'll happen, but the risk is if the hyperscalers go, eh, best turn off the taps a little bit here on the amount of CapEx we're spending. 'Cause if that happens, this whole house of cards falls down. But it might not happen, in which case they may well carry on spending like it's going out of fashion, in which case, wehey, Nebius and the like, CoreWeave, et cetera, are the monster winners.

Alright, well, let's step out of the tech world and go to old-fashioned European banking dinosaurs. So this is the deal where the Italian bank Unicredit has launched a fresh $28 billion bid for the rest of the German firm Commerzbank. So maybe, uh, in as neat and concise way as we can, maybe unpacking what's happened. Then there's a little bit about the run-up to this point, 'cause it's been quite a multi-year, uh, deal. There's a few interesting players behind the scenes, both from a corporate and political level. And then there's also the ECB involved with this, given that it's cross-border and such a magnitude for that sector. So where should we begin? Should we look at what's happened so far?

Well, yeah, like at a top level first is kind of what's interesting about it. So this is UniCredit's bid for Commerzbank. Basically, it's not just a takeover attempt. It's actually quite— in fact, it isn't a takeover attempt. We'll get into that in a second, but it's really a test case for cross-border consolidation in European banking. You know, the Europeans have been talking for years like years and years, like go back to 2008 or 2010 and '11, particularly in 2012 when the Spanish banking system had a bailout, right? Go back to those times. And ever since then, the Europeans have been talking about building a pan-European banking system to compete with the US giants, right? So this is a lot to do with national politics, basically regulation getting in the way. Classic EU, you know, good ideas being basically halted by political brinksmanship and regulation, right? And so this is a classic. So UniCredit's move could become one of the first sort of examples of a successful, big, major cross-border European bank merger.

And what makes this one particularly unusual then is that normally when we talk of company names as large as this, as significant as this, it's normally like alarm bells go off, the regulators kind of jumped into action. So here the ECB, as you rightly mentioned, I guess part of the inception of the European project was about the unity of it all in order to compete on a global level, as you said. So the European Central Bank, very much encouraging this type of behavior, especially cross-border, as you said, to counter the US presence. So yeah, is this though just the collision course between, well, they're on board, they're not the problem, which is again, normally not the case.

Yeah. Right.

So what is the problem? And so I guess you mentioned one thing, so let me cross that first, which is Why is this not then, as the headline would suggest, a full-blown takeover? One. And then two, what are Unicredit up to and why is it unlikely, at least at this point, looking like the resistance is not going to change anytime soon from Germany?

Yeah. So look, this story's been rumbling for years behind the scenes. Unicredit have been slowly, slowly, slowly, step, step, step, building up a big position. In Commerzbank, but via the public markets, right? So just buying shares, blocks of shares, you know, just moving along, ticking up its, its kind of ownership step by step. They've, they've built in there some derivative exposure as well, and basically they've been sneaking up to just below the 30% threshold. Okay. Now 30% threshold is quite a key. It's like that first sort of key milestone in terms of the percentage of ownership. If you smash through the 30% threshold of ownership, then things start triggering, like you are then kind of, you know, obligated to submit a bid for the rest of the business, right? So 30% is a key threshold. 50% is a key threshold. What Commerce Bank are trying to do here is trying to get up through the 30% without triggering the threshold. Well, sorry, without triggering the obligation to bid for the whole bank, because they can't afford the whole bank. They can't buy it at the moment, right? This is like a more of a longer-term play. So what's happened here, this kind of fresh $28 billion bid for the rest of Commerzbank, I think it's a little bit of a, well, let's just say some sort of, I guess, a bit of a freedom of license from the journalist's point of view here, because this isn't their strategy. So what they've done here is offered to buy a fresh unsolicited offer. Okay. The idea is to push their stake, just sneak it above 30% quietly without triggering the obligation to submit a full bid. So it's an unsolicited offer. That just means that It hasn't been, they're not in negotiation with the Commerzbank board. Oh, and by the way, who's on the board? The German government. They own about 12 to 13% of Commerzbank, one of the largest shareholders, of course. This isn't through the board. This is like just, yeah, straight to shareholders. Okay. This is an all-share exchange. So 0.485 Unicredit shares gets you one Commerzbank share. And so this implies a value of €30.80 per share. What's the timing of this? Well, don't forget, for years this has been going on. Well, what's the timing? Well, off the back of the sudden flare-up in the geopolitical risk in the Middle East and Europe's exposure to that through natural gas and inflation and potential economic impact has meant that Commerzbank share price It's taken a bit of a move to the downside. It's lost like, I would say 20% over the last few weeks. And so here's UniCredit just coming in and just trying to edge up their holding whilst we're on a little bit of a dip, right? So that's the kind of timing why this latest kind of approach is kind of—

Yeah, I thought that was quite neat in Saab when his notes he put together for us, he was talking about kind of the distraction over here. It reminds me of the Thomas Crown affair.

That's the other thing.

There's a lot of noise happening over here and you just go and lift the painting off the wall sort of thing. And so it's, so, you know, when political attention is absorbed by geopolitical instability and macro concerns, you know, it's not just, are we participating and supporting Europe or aligning with US as is the talk of last week? But also what is the consequence that that's going to have on European rates and then domestic economy?

Yeah.

This becomes slightly a lesser prominent issue.

Yeah.

And so, you know, does it create a great window to move in on what otherwise would've been intensely scrutinized? So opportunistic in timing.

So opportunistic strategy. I love it. It's like share prices just been chopped a little bit. Loads of media attention on the war. Let's just try and sneak this through. It's classic Orsell. So Andrea Orsell, who's the CEO of UniCredit here, and I don't know if you want to also, also known as, aka the Ronaldo of investment banking according to Gemini.

Uh, he's got quite a past. Um, so goes back to the early '90s. He spent two decades rising to the exec chairman of investment banking, Merrill Lynch. This was, um, he was the primary architect of the 1998 merger that created UniCredit itself.

Right.

However, at the same point, he did also at the end of that tenure advise on the massive and ultimately ill-fated $55 billion acquisition of ABN Amro by RBS in 2007. He then went to UBS for 2012, 2018. He was president of investment banking and then Santander 2018 to 2021. So he's a, he's one of the star dealmakers, but some have questions that he's got a little bit of a deal addiction.

Yeah. He's a rainmaker and he deals, it's just deals, deals, deals. And I think, you know, he's obviously coming, he's in the kind of latter years of his career, of course. And so I think this is like probably, I mean, I'm guessing here, but it's probably like a one final kind of landmark deal, like a career-defining deal to kind of seal his legacy, I guess. So look, this clever kind of tactical play. Going on behind the scenes here. But, you know, as I was saying, like this would value the bank roughly at $35 billion, right? Commerce Bank, it would get valued at roughly $35 billion. But UniCredit, they're not presenting this as a near-term path to an immediate full merger. So they're basically, the point is around trying to kind of just force engagement with the board who basically have slammed the door in their face a few times over the last couple of years. As they've been showing interest, it's like trying to get a bit of dialogue going, gain greater strategic flexibility rather than expecting a kind of wave of shareholders to immediately go, yeah, bang, let's go. I'll take that bid because they're offering to buy these shares at €30.80, but you go and check the share price and it's €33.50. So why would you? Accept this bid. You just, if you wanted to sell some shares, right, we'll go out into the open market and do it unless you had a huge block and find there's market impact risk. But still, it's not a very good bid.

Yeah. And so lining up the opposition then on the other side of also on the table is Bettina Orlop, who has been consistent in defending Commerzbank's independence. You then got the German government, the state you said owns just short of 13%. Right. Meaning the German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has reiterated Germany wants an independent commerce bank. The finance minister wants to protect jobs. And on the other, I guess thinking of this more laterally, the Italian side, Meloni's not really commented too much on this. But the German defensive line would feel pretty strong here. And this doesn't even mention things like the labor union, Verdi.

Well, exactly.

Where I think Commerzbank employs in the ballpark of what, 40,000 employees or so.

Yeah.

And they are fiercely anti-takeover of this. So, yeah, I guess, I guess, well, what can they do though? What's the defensive measure to stop this? Does it have to be The government can stop it because at this point it feels like the ECB will loosen the rule on the 30% marker again, because it's in their incentive to have that deal go through. Germany, I guess one is the UniCredit tactic here that the German political will, will give over because of political change that ultimately happens in very short-termist Western democracies. Yeah. There's such identity tied to Commerzbank, like Deutsche Bank and so forth. Could they ever let that go?

This is such a, the irony of all of this, 'cause you know, I'm old enough to remember the East, you know, the Eurozone debt crisis. I traded through it, 2011, 2012. You know, Italy went to the brink. I mean, literally. And Germany were the safe haven of Europe, the absolute rock stability, their banking system particularly. I mean, all right, Deutsche Bank got whacked, but, and there were some issues with Germany as well, to be fair. But look, compared to Italy, Germany were like rock solid. And here you've got an Italian bank trying to swoop in and hoover up a German bank. So I think there's definitely some kind of, yeah, some ego, some German ego probably in the way here. And then as you said, don't underestimate the power of the unions. And look, this would be a classic merger and kind of obviously synergy cost savings, meaning job losses. And so the unions are like big time, big time, big time anti this. And so yeah, you've got the German government on the board with that kind of political legacy ego thing and the unions getting in the way. So that, look, it's a very tough path, which is why Orsell's just been doing it little. It's just been nibbling away for years. Little nibble, you know, strategic moments. Oh, there's a war on distracting. Oh, the share price is just right. A little nibble, little nibble, and it's just kind of a, a stealth play until I guess they build up, because if this works and they get through the 30% without it, I don't know. I, to be honest, I don't know the exact mechanism for how they do that without it triggering their need to do a full takeover bid. But apparently there's a path to get through that hurdle and then it's right. They've kind of got license to then buy more slowly in the year, you know, in the next 12 months, whatever it is, to try and get up towards 50%. It's just kind of a really bizarre kind of slow motion, you know, nibbling takeover.

Well, let's leave it to our audience. What I'll do is I'll put a poll on this episode and we can see, let's not put an end date on it. Let's just have it as straight out. Will UniCredit in the end acquire Commerzbank? Yes or no?

I'm gonna get this on the Amplify Me prediction market. I see what you're doing there.

Yeah. I'm gonna create a market and then we'll create, uh, if it gets over the 30%, you can also trade that market.

Yeah.

If, if will it go through by the end of 2027 is market one. I'll then create a secondary market off of that on when it gets over 30%, you get, you get a payout as well.

Okay.

Yeah. Check it out. We're joking. This is not investment advice. All right, cool. Well, yeah. Thank you, Piers. And yeah, hopefully that was interesting and yeah, do let us know on the poll what you think, but have a great week ahead.

Thanks a lot.