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finexpert | ValueTrust
The 2026 issue of the finexpert | ValueTrust German Takeover Report Vol. 12 April 2026 covers all takeover offers and delisting tender offers of the year 2025 according to the German takeover code WpÜG and provides extensive information on relevant variables like bid types, premia offered, market reaction of target’s and (if available) on bidder’s stock prices. This report contains a detailed description of the takeover offer of Zalando SE for ABOUT YOU Holding SE from January 2025. In 2025, German public M&A activity was characterized by two distinct trends: The number of primary offers remained broadly stable, whereas the number of delisting offers declined by two-thirds. Due to the absence of large offers, the aggregate primary offer volume has dropped to COVID-19 levels (EUR 5.9 billion). >more
Content
1 Preface & People
4 Market Overview
13 Capital Market Reaction
17 Statements & Fairness Opinions
25 Success Rates
30 Takeover Case Study: ABOUT YOU
32 Endgame Analysis
37 Transaction Details 2025

Allianz Research
US LARGE BANKS: THE PEAK OF THE CYCLE IS NOT THE TIME TO BE COMPLACENT
US large-cap banks posted record Q1 2026 earnings, and both earnings growth and asset quality sits well above trend. Yet, investors seem wary about how long the good times can last, for at least four reasons. Bank equities underperformed the S&P 500 and credit spreads widened versus non-financial peers. The market is looking beyond balance sheets and pricing a gap between reported solvency and true loss-absorption capacity. >more

Goldman Sachs
CRACKS IN PRIVATE CREDIT
After over a decade of rapid growth and relative calm, the private credit market has come under pressure as several high-profile defaults, concerns about potentially inflated valuations, and especially substantial exposure to a software industry vulnerable to AI disruption have fueled a surge in redemption requests. Could these stresses trigger a systemic crisis? And even if not, could they meaningfully impair the outlook for private credit? >more

Lazard
AI IMPACT ON TECHNOLOGY M&A
Lazard's Technology Advisory team returns with an updated version of AI Impact on Technology M&A, examining how markets are navigating a structural reckoning over AI's impact on the software ecosystem, the emerging divergence between "AI Beneficiaries" and "Systems of Record" versus "Workflow Wrappers" facing existential risk, and an updated framework for the Agentic Era — where value is defined by proprietary data, workflow complexity, domain expertise, deterministic models, and business model adaptability. >more

KfW Research
KFW-VENTURE-CAPITAL-DASHBOARD Q1 2026
Despite significant economic and geopolitical uncertainties, the German venture capital market has made a solid start to 2026. German start-ups raised €1.7 billion in the first quarter, six per cent more than in the first quarter of 2025. The investment volume was not driven by individual mega-deals, but resulted from stable growth across the breadth of the market. International investors again played a proportionally larger role in financing German start-ups in the first quarter than in previous quarters. Over three-quarters of the funds invested came from abroad, compared with around two-thirds in each of the two preceding quarters. Investors from the US accounted for 34 per cent of the funds invested, making them the most important source of capital for German start-ups. >more

SUSTAINABLE INVESTING AND MARKET GOVERNANCE
Alvin Chen, Deeksha Gupta, and Jan Starmans
2025
This paper examines how sustainable investing affects the governance role of financial markets. We show that stronger concerns about externalities among informed investors can reduce price informativeness about managerial effort to improve financial performance, increasing the cost of incentive provision. This mechanism creates an inherent link between firms' environmental and social (ES) and governance quality. We show that the agency costs of sustainable investing can have real effects on ES outcomes when firms can affect their externalities. >more

FLYING BELOW THE RADAR: INSIDER TRADING BY EXECUTIVES BELOW THE TOP
Hans K. Hvide, and Kasper Meisner Nielsen
2026
To enforce insider trading laws, financial regulators require top executives to make their owncompany trades public. One implication of this regulatory focus is that executives below the top fly under the radar. We use administrative register data from Norway to examine whether executives below the top in listed companies earn abnormal returns on purchases in own-company stock. We find evidence of abnormal returns on such trades, about 50 to 100 basis points at the 1month horizon. The abnormal returns on purchases in other stocks are negative, making high investor ability an unlikely explanation. >more