Vietnam’s M&A market enters a reset, defining new opportunity cycle

Real estate remains the sector with the largest share of M&A activity. (Photo: baodautu.vn)

Hanoi (VNA) – The year 2025 marks a “new momentum” phase for Vietnam’s merger and acquisition (M&A) market as Southeast Asia continues to grapple with financial volatility, geopolitical uncertainty, and valuation expectatio gaps.

Domestic investors remain main driving force

Viet­nam main­tained a degree of resi­li­ence, sup­por­ted by select­ive large trans­ac­tions and steady par­ti­cip­a­tion from regional stra­tegic investors.

While the deal volume stood at around 220 trans­ac­tions in the first 10 months of 2025, total dis­closed value reached 2.3 bil­lion USD, with each transaction averaging 29.4 million USD, down from the peak of 50.7 million USD last year. This indicates more cau­tious under­writ­ing, stricter due dili­gence, and dis­cip­lined valu­ations, par­tic­u­larly in sec­tors facing mar­gin pres­sure or slower near-term demand.

Mar­ket value this year was driven by sev­eral size­able deals, includ­ing the 365 mil­lion USD acquis­i­tion of East­ern Real Estate by Birch, Hyosung’s 277 mil­lion USD restruc­tur­ing, AEON’s 162 mil­lion USD buy­out of Post and Tele­com­mu­nic­a­tion Fin­ance Co., Ltd., and Ares Management’s 50 mil­lion USD acquis­i­tion of Med­latec Group.

Not­ably, these top mega­deals were led by for­eign and regional investors, under­scor­ing con­tin­ued cross-bor­der appet­ite for high qual­ity, asset-backed, and stra­tegic­ally essen­tial plat­forms.

Fol­low­ing the unusu­ally high 50.7 mil­lion USD aver­age deal size in 2024, the value mod­er­ated to 29.4 mil­lion USD in Janu­ary–Octo­ber this year, reflect­ing a return to more typ­ical deal size distribution and a lar­ger share of mid-mar­ket activ­ity.

Deal activ­ity became more evenly dis­trib­uted across major sec­tors, with real estate sup­por­ted by improv­ing liquid­ity, health ­care strongly boosted, and mater­i­als and indus­tri­als benefiting from ongo­ing sup­ply chain realign­ment. The con­sumer sec­tor remained muted amid com­pet­it­ive pres­sures, tar­iff-related uncertainty earlier in the year, and tighter tax enforce­ment.

This year up to Novem­ber, Viet­namese investors con­tin­ued to play a pivotal role in the mar­ket, con­trib­ut­ing more than 30% of the total dis­closed deal value. However, the gap with for­eign investors has nar­rowed mean­ing­fully, as Singa­pore posted 613 million USD, fol­lowed by Japan with 214 million USD, the US with 150 million USD, and the Republic of Korea with 122 million USD.

Increasingly diverse M&A appetites

Deal activ­ity shows a not­able shift in sec­tor con­tri­bu­tion, with real estate (27%), mater­i­als (20%), and health­ care (10%) emer­ging as the top three drivers of total deal value. Together, these sec­tors account for more than half of all trans­ac­tions, under­scor­ing investor pref­er­ence for asset-backed busi­nesses, essen­tial upstream indus­tries, and high-growth ser­vice plat­forms.

The M&A market is expected to speed up in 2026 thanks to support from the revised Land Law, which will pave the way for large real estate deals; the dir­ect power pur­chase mechanism, hoped to fuel renewable energy investment; and more resources poured into health care, education, infrastructure, manufacturing, and export due to domestic demand and the national development roadmap.

In particular, when the legal framework becomes more transparent and market liquidity improved, Vietnam is gradually establishing itself as one of the most attractive M&A detinations in Southeast Asia in both medium and long terms.

Though the M&A number continued to decrease, a rise in transaction quality and value shows that investors are prioritising strategic assets promising long-term value. The increasing focus on quality real estate, private health, material production, and sustainable business models is an irreversible trend.

From multi-million-USD deals in 2025 to M&A plans for 2026, Vietnam is shaping a new M&A cycle – stricter selection but greater opportunities, especially for investors with long-term vision and clear strategies./.