Almost two decades on from the global financial crisis, Scotland’s big energy deals have signalled a return to form. With a strong pipeline of start-ups and high-quality mid-market businesses lined up for investment, it’s later-stage capital that is in high demand. By Nicholas Neveling.
In the decade leading up to 2008, Scotland punched above its weight for M&A. Largely thanks to two heavyweight institutions – the Bank of Scotland (BOS) and RBS – some of the biggest UK deals relied on Scottish advisers and debt. VC and mid-market private equity also flourished. The financial crisis put paid to a lot of that, of course; RBS went into public ownership and BOS was merged into Lloyds TSB.
In the years that followed, regional UK hubs such as the North West, the Midlands and Yorkshire have come out of Scotland’s shadow to eclipse it in terms of deal volume and value, while the Scottish advisory community reconfigured.
According to data from Experian there were 362 M&A transactions in Scotland in the first nine months of 2025, with a total disclosed value of £4.5bn. Volumes are pretty much in line with 2024 – and up on 2020-2023 – but value is down, revealing a pattern of more mid-market and lower mid-market deals in 2025.
Big-ticket highlights of last year include Macquarie Specialised and Asset Finance’s acquisition of Glasgow-headquartered SP Smart Meter Assets for £900m, Apollo Global’s £770m buyout of Aberdeen-based renewable energy solutions business OEG Group, and the £657m acquisition of Mining Software by Glasgow-headquartered FTSE 100 engineering company (and previous ICAEW Corporate Development award winner) Weir Group.
Leaning on local
Scotland is very much a region where the mid-market is key. Deal activity is driven by owner-managers, entrepreneurs and family-owned companies, and dealmaking is still very much relationship-based. Local presence goes far.
“There is an active local advisory community in Scotland, and we consistently receive referrals from Scotland-based advisers,” says Katie Ford, senior investment manager at Glasgow-based Panoramic Growth Equity. But the pandemic also levelled the playing field for competitors based south of the border.
“Since Covid, London-based firms can cover Scotland more easily using Teams and Zoom,” says Lee Donaldson, LDC investment director covering Scotland. “If you can say, ‘We’ve done all the transactions in your sector and know every trade buyer,’ that’s compelling for a vendor. Companies and founders are much more open-minded. There is no shortage of provision and there are plenty of deals to look at.”
Despite the upheavals Scotland’s M&A market has endured since the 2000s, it remains a sophisticated deal ecosystem – with the required expertise and infrastructure to execute sizeable transactions. “For big-ticket deals, you’ll see London investment banks competing for assets, but for most transactions, local advice is highly valued,” says Edinburgh-based Craig Goold, BDO’s head of M&A for Scotland. “Clients like working with people who are building careers and reputations in Scotland. Every deal matters to us, and the local angle resonates strongly.”
BDO transaction services partner Adam Broatch, also in Edinburgh, adds: “Reflecting the nature of Scotland’s transaction market, building relationships is key. Once that trust is established, we can bring in technical expertise from the wider firm network to deliver the full service. It’s a joint approach, but relationships come first.”
Having invested in strengthening its Scottish presence in recent years, BDO’s Scotland M&A team has posted annual revenue growth of around 30%, according to Goold, who took over as head of the team last spring.
More PE please
If there’s one thing that most Scottish advisers and dealmakers would like to see more of in 2026, it is private equity.
“Whilst there are a select number of quality local investors, private equity houses from other regions are also active here and remain committed to investing in Scotland,” says Craig Goold, BDO’s head of M&A for Scotland. Compared with Manchester or Birmingham, the local private equity scene in Scotland probably has less scale.
LDC investment director for Scotland Lee Donaldson says an influx of private equity capital could have a transformative impact on Scotland’s M&A landscape, encouraging Scotland’s burgeoning pool of start-ups to scale into sizeable businesses. “Scotland punches above its weight in early-stage VC and angel investment, but scaling businesses to the next level remains a challenge. There is an exciting opportunity for private equity to play a bigger role in that growth,” he says.
However, Quantuma corporate finance director Calvin Bond, says momentum is gathering, as UK firms bolster Scottish teams and resources. “Private equity is becoming more and more prominent in Scotland. There’s a real mix of capital in the market, with regional funds being deployed locally by national players, and a variety of Scottish family offices – plus PE funds based down south are now identifying acquisition opportunities for existing portfolio companies as well as new platform investments,” he says. “There is also a shift in the business-owner mindset, with greater openness to exploring other options outside the traditional trade sale route.”
Sectors vs cities
Donaldson says buyside dealmakers benefit from boots on the ground: “I’m based in Scotland. I think that makes it easier for management teams and company founders to connect with us. People value the ability to tap into someone nearby during a major event. It is still a point of differentiation, despite the rise of virtual meetings.”
Local offices also help advisers and dealmakers to cover a region that exhibits very different characteristics to other UK deal clusters. Unlike Manchester or Leeds, for example, which operate as single-city hubs, Scotland has many deal centres, each with its own communities and sector drivers.
“Scotland is unique. You’ve got major hubs in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen, spread across one of the largest land masses in the UK,” says Edinburgh-based Alan O’Riordan, corporate finance partner at Azets. “Advisers often split teams across those cities, but local networks remain critical.”
While most deal flow sits in the main cities, rural areas still see meaningful activity
The bulk of advisers are concentrated in the central belt between Glasgow and Edinburgh, although several are based further north on the east coast in Aberdeen, Dundee, and Inverness. Most also have satellite offices to cover the more remote areas of Scotland. “Despite increasing consolidation, there are many independent firms still active across Scotland,” says Panoramic’s Ford. “While most deal flow sits in the main cities, rural areas still see meaningful activity. And when specialist corporate finance support is required, firms collaborate with external expertise to ensure continuity of service for their clients.”
With varying deal drivers in each centre, advisers need to add a breadth of sector expertise to their local networking capabilities to ensure effective regional coverage.
“Edinburgh has active financial services, asset management, technology and life sciences industries,” says Glasgow-based Addleshaw Goddard partner Anna Brown. “In Glasgow, industrials and manufacturing have been the main areas historically, but there is now a strong technology and banking services presence in the city. Aberdeen has its own microclimate, with a strong international focus and links to Norway due to the energy sector.”
Danny Lee, Edinburgh-based head of corporate practice in Scotland for Burges Salmon, says that while each centre’s traditional sector strengths still shape deal activity, boundaries are beginning to blur: “Sector patterns still hold, but physical location is starting to matter less, and sector expertise is starting to matter more. Deals are no longer siloed by geography. Advisory teams will collaborate nationally, combining local relationships with specialist input from other offices.”
BDO’s Goold agrees: “We don’t really differentiate by location. Tech, life sciences, and industrials are spread across Scotland. Our recent deal analysis shows an even distribution across sectors and locations.”
Home of innovation
One driver behind the convergence in deal and advisory activity between previously distinctive Scottish deal hubs has been the growth of the country’s start-up community. Technology and life sciences start-ups in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee, Inverness, and Aberdeen have helped foster more cohesive links and networks between cities.
Skyscanner and FanDuel – Scotland’s first unicorns – have inspired a new generation of Scottish entrepreneurs. Supported by the country’s research-led universities, a flurry of fast-growing companies have emerged in the fields of healtech, maritimetech, fintech, and AI. These include Zelim, a developer of autonomous maritime rescue vehicles, AI-powered legaltech company Wordsmith AI, and Malted AI, a developer of low-cost AI models.
The support flowing into Scotland’s start-up community is helping entrepreneurs to scale
“The funding and support that is flowing into Scotland’s start-up community is creating more optimism and opportunity for entrepreneurs to scale successfully,” says Calvin Bond, Glasgow-based corporate finance director at Quantuma. “There is a focus on helping companies to scale better, and to build more companies that reach a scale where new private equity and venture capital backers see solid investment cases to fund further rounds of growth.”
O’Riordan believes Scotland is becoming more entrepreneurial. “There’s a growing ecosystem of incubators and angel investors, and new generations are embracing VC funding and scaling ambitions,” he says. “We do observe a mindset shift. New generations are more open to external funding and growth capital, signalling a dynamic and forward-looking market.”
Looking ahead to 2026, there is a general consensus across Scotland’s advisory community that stable interest rates and pent-up M&A demand will support steady deal flow.
“The market has been buoyant and remains active. We see divestment of non-core assets and consolidation in a number of areas, including professional services as the key themes driving activity in the next 12-18 months, with energy transition, cybersecurity, and tech and AI also busy,” says Brown.
A large pool of family-owned companies are looking at their options, given the budget and tax changes
Bond expects succession will also play a part. “There is a large pool of Scottish family-owned businesses that have been passed down from generation to generation for decades, but we do sense a shift, with family-owned companies looking at different options, particularly in the context of ongoing budget and tax changes in the UK and Scotland.”
Scotland’s M&A market has changed significantly in the past two decades. What hasn’t changed is its advisers’ willingness to make things happen. “Scotland has one of the most developed and sophisticated deal advisory communities in the UK. Unlike some regions dominated by a handful of heavyweights, Scotland offers a diverse mix,” says Lee. “This breadth of representation is about dynamism,” he adds. “Scotland is an active, competitive space that firms don’t want to miss out on.”
Connecting the country
In 2017, in the Scottish border town of Duns, Alex and Laura Cacciamani, fed up with slow internet speed, decided to launch a business. GoFibre, a broadband provider specialising in providing high-speed connections in hard-to-reach locations – a big issue in Scotland, with its many remote areas – has been a huge success.
It now employs more than 200 staff, operates three offices in Scotland and the North of England, and has won two contracts to build fast broadband networks from Project Gigabit, the government programme to provide remote communities with high-speed broadband connectivity.
In August last year, GoFibre secured a £125m funding round to support its plans to roll out full fibre broadband to more than 130,000 premises. Neil Conaghan, GoFibre’s chief executive, said the funding round marked “a step-change in GoFibre’s position both as a major independent broadband provider and as a significant company in Scotland”.
The round was led by the Scottish National Investment Bank, a development bank launched by the Scottish government in 2020 to support investment in energy transition, innovation, and extending equality of opportunity. The bank was capitalised with £2bn to be invested over 10 years.
Top five Scottish deals in 2025
Roslin Innovation Centre, on the University of Edinburgh’s Easter Bush Campus, supports businesses in the animal health, agri-tech, aquaculture (A3), and One Health sectors
