Globally, announced M&A value jumped 43% in 2025 to US$4.7 trillion, with more than sixty deals above US$10 billion, according to McKinsey, and while Australia and New Zealand both rode that wave they did so at noticeably different speeds. Pitcher Partners’ Dealmakers report recorded 1,132 completed deals in Australia last year, up 8% on 2024, with mid-market activity rising 11% in volume and 14% in value, whereas PwC’s own tracking told a slightly different story, with overall deal value actually falling 8% to US$79.5bn — although even in PwC’s numbers, private equity buyout value specifically jumped 32%.

Two different measures, then, pointing at the same underlying signal: PE-led activity is the part of this market that is unambiguously accelerating.

New Zealand’s Q2 2026 update from PwC NZ shows the same shift playing out on a smaller scale, with private equity involvement rising quarter on quarter from four deals to six, and nearly half of all New Zealand deals now involving an overseas buyer, with Australia the single biggest source of that offshore interest.

We sit across both markets, and when we compared notes the same pattern showed up on either side of the Tasman: the overall picture is mixed, but PE-led activity is unmistakably picking up in both. What we’re also hearing is that business owners, boards and executive teams are discovering this mid-process, once a deal is already in play, and finding either that the CFO in the seat isn’t the person to run it or that they need to bring in additional resource to provide the uplift the transaction requires.

Three things are driving that. The first is simply that deal volume is genuinely rising, with technology the standout sector on both sides of the Tasman — Ansarada’s Deal Indicators report found ANZ tech deal room activity grew 43% year-on-year, driven largely by AI infrastructure and data centre demand.

The second is that M&A has become a standing strategic tool rather than a one-off event, with PwC’s 2026 outlook finding that around 40% of CEOs now plan to drive transformation through M&A and partnerships over the next twelve months, which means deal-making is being built into strategy on an ongoing basis rather than reached for opportunistically when the right target appears. The third, and the least obvious, is that AI is quietly freeing up the capacity to do this work at all: both Wolters Kluwer’s 2026 Future Ready CFO survey and separate research from Workday point the same way, with routine transaction processing and compliance increasingly absorbed by automation, leaving CFOs more room for the judgement-heavy end of the role — scenario modelling, capital allocation and, increasingly, running the deal itself.

Layer onto that a genuine talent gap, with a CFO Alliance / Diligent survey finding that 40% of executives say they lack people in-house with real M&A experience and that fewer than half of boards are actively engaged in shaping transaction strategy, and then add mandatory ACCC clearance now required before Australian deals can complete — a change PwC describes as the most significant merger control reform in decades — and it becomes clear how far the skill bar for the CFO seat has moved in a relatively short space of time.

Cross-border literacy matters more than it used to as well. Aon’s 2026 ANZ forecast makes the point that with roughly half of New Zealand deals and a meaningful share of Australian mid-market activity involving overseas buyers, CFOs need to be comfortable with foreign due diligence, FX exposure and multi-jurisdiction structuring, and the same report flags that warranty and indemnity risk is drawing closer attention, with insurers looking harder at cyber and data-breach exposure in W&I underwriting — another due diligence area that increasingly lands on the CFO’s desk.

We asked a CFO this week what people most often get wrong about this shift, and his answer was how market-facing the role has become. This isn’t back-office modelling; it’s boardrooms, bidders and advisers in real time, with your credibility on the line.

If your finance leadership bench hasn’t been tested by a live deal, that’s worth a conversation before your next one lands.

Sources: PwC New Zealand M&A Quarterly Update Q2 2026; PwC Australia M&A Outlook 2026; Pitcher Partners Dealmakers Mid-market M&A in Australia (March 2026); Aon 2026 ANZ M&A forecast; Ansarada 2025 Australia and New Zealand Deal Indicators; McKinsey & Company; Wolters Kluwer 2026 Future Ready CFO Survey; Workday CFO Role Evolution research; CFO Alliance / Diligent 2025–26 Global Mid-Market Talent & Compensation Trends Report.