Wall Street traders and dealmakers returned to their desks on Monday for the first full day of trading in 2026 under a shifting global world order.
America’s capture of Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan president, has escalated geopolitical tensions; yet the focus in Manhattan banking headquarters at the start of the week was on rising US equities and an acceleration of mergers and acquisitions activity.
Andrew Woeber, global head of M&A at Barclays, told me: “I think CEOs and boards have become used to volatility, uncertainty and risk. I would say that they look at it this way: that the bigger risk for them is not acting and waiting for perfect conditions.”
He said there was no sign of deals being paused for review in light of recent developments. “I think we could see something like that if the geopolitical environment heats up further but right now, not at all,” he said. “We’re just not seeing it.”
President Trump has ushered in a revival of mergers and acquisitions in corporate America by pushing to loosen regulations. The prevailing view on Wall Street is that the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission have a more open view around mergers, particularly as they relate to antitrust issues. However, foreign investment deals are expected to be more closely scrutinised by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States due to national security concerns.
Dealmaking briefly slowed in April last year after Trump unveiled sweeping tariffs on the so-called liberation day. However, activity recovered in the second half of the year as fears about the impact of tariffs dampened and the economic outlook improved.
Global M&A volumes in 2025 reached $3.6 trillion, the second-highest on record, with North America accounting for $2.2 trillion of activity, according to Bloomberg.
Dealmakers are brushing off the latest geopolitical tensions as they get stuck into a huge backlog of mergers and acquisitions from the end of last year that are yet to complete.
Woeber said: “Significant recent M&A is being driven by global companies onshoring to the US, and AI-related deals related to power, data centres, software, chips and industrial companies that make the components used inside data centres.”
He noted that he is seeing a wave of companies selling businesses that are subscale, or not the biggest drivers of growth.
For now, Trump is continuing to spur Wall Street’s “animal spirits”. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose to a new record on Monday after Trump pledged American energy companies would revive Venezuela’s crude production.
An increase in the number of IPOs in the US at the end of last year is also accelerating into this year, according to bankers. Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI are all potential candidates to file in 2026, although it is likely that some of the largest IPOs will not be ready until 2027, should they go ahead.
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Charles Myers, chairman of Signum Global Advisors, a New York-based geopolitical risk firm, said he had not had any incoming communications from clients concerned that the military intervention in Venezuela could lead to further escalation between the US and Russia or China.
However, he said clients had been asking about comments regarding potential intervention in Cuba and Greenland. Trump has said Cuba is “ready to fall” after the capture of Maduro and has renewed his calls for a US takeover of the Danish territory of Greenland due to America’s national security interests.
Myers said: “It’s really more, what is Trump going to do next? As opposed to, is this going to escalate and accelerate any potential stand-off or conflict with Russia, China?”
Business leaders willing to publicly criticise Trump’s policies remain few and far between. Instead, the focus is on investment opportunities.
Myers says he is planning a trip to Venezuela with representatives from a range of sectors, including leading hedge funds and asset managers, to scout for investment prospects there. “We have a huge amount of interest,” Myers said. “We’re massively oversubscribed.”
Louisa Clarence-Smith is US business editor
