M&A is recovering. But recovery is not the same as uniform growth.

Global M&A value rose 15% during the first eight months of 2026, according to Boston Consulting Group, while the number of transactions valued at $10 billion or more reached 37—above the previous record of 32 megadeals recorded in 2021. Yet the recovery remains concentrated at the top. Transactions below $1 billion continue to run below longer-term norms, while regional performance has diverged sharply. North America accounted for more than half of global deal value, Europe recorded strong growth, and Asia-Pacific declined in aggregate value.

Those numbers tell us where transactions are occurring.

They raise a different question:

Where does the value created by those transactions actually go?

That question matters because an acquisition does more than transfer ownership between two companies. It can redirect capital, consolidate facilities, alter supply relationships, relocate decision-making, reshape employment, and change the strategic importance of particular places.

The financial model captures some of that movement.

The geographic dimension is easier to overlook.

Value Is Created Somewhere

The conventional M&A model is deliberately financial. Buyers assess enterprise value, purchase price, synergies, cash flow, financing requirements, returns, and the assumptions supporting the investment thesis.

Those measures remain essential.

But the business being acquired does not exist in a spreadsheet.

It operates through factories, offices, laboratories, distribution centers, data infrastructure, suppliers, customers, employees, regulators, and communities. Its capabilities are distributed across locations. Its relationships are often deeply embedded in those locations.

When ownership changes, those geographic relationships can change with it.

A facility may receive new capital or become a candidate for consolidation. A regional office may gain greater strategic importance—or lose decision-making authority. A supplier network may expand, contract, or be reorganized. Employees may be retained, relocated, replaced, or asked to support a different operating model.

The transaction therefore has a geography even when the deal model does not explicitly show one.

This is where Peter Dicken’s Global Shift: Mapping the Changing Contours of the World Economy (6^th edition) provides a useful intellectual starting point.

Hi argument is broader than M&A. His concern is the organization of economic activity across places and the uneven consequences of global production networks. In Chapter 14, he asks who captures the value created within those networks and who benefits from value creation and enhancement. He examines whether participation in global production networks can improve a place’s economic well-being through capital investment, stimulation of local firms, knowledge diffusion, and employment. He also identifies the possibility of unequal gains, worker displacement, and dependence on external firms.

Chapter 16 takes the geographic question further.

Its title is direct: “Winning and Losing: Where You Live Really Matters.”

He argues that the effects of globalizing processes are experienced at the local scale, where economic activity is physically established, restructured, or closed and where people make their livelihoods. He describes developed regions as “islands of relative prosperity” and connects this idea to the broader metaphor of the global economy as an archipelago. He also points to extensive economic margins beyond those islands of prosperity.

The implication for M&A is straightforward:

Value may be created in aggregate while being distributed unevenly across places.

That does not make uneven outcomes inherently wrong or prevent necessary restructuring. It means that the geography of a transaction is part of the transaction’s economic reality.

The Geography Behind the Deal Model

Consider a buyer acquiring a company with operations in five countries.

The purchase agreement identifies the target.

The financial model identifies revenue, margins, working capital, debt, synergies, and expected returns.

Due diligence identifies contracts, intellectual property, regulatory obligations, technology, and other assets.

But another map exists beneath all of them.

Where are the critical employees?

Where is specialized knowledge concentrated?

Which facility produces the component that cannot easily be replicated?

Which suppliers depend on the target’s continued operation?

Which customers depend on a particular regional presence?

Where are regulatory relationships concentrated?

Which locations carry capabilities that appear interchangeable on an organizational chart but are not interchangeable in practice?

These questions become particularly important when the value thesis depends on integration.

A buyer may expect cost synergies from consolidating facilities. That may be economically rational. But the facility being consolidated may also contain specialized employees, supplier relationships, technical knowledge, or customer access that are not captured by the cost line being removed.

Likewise, a headquarters relocation may reduce overhead while moving strategic decision-making away from a region that has developed deep institutional knowledge.

The issue is not whether every facility should be preserved or every job protected.

The issue is whether the consequences of changing the geography have been understood.

That distinction matters.

A transaction should not be judged by whether its effects are evenly distributed. Businesses must allocate capital according to strategy, economics, and competitive realities. Some assets will be consolidated. Some operations will move. Some jobs will disappear while others are created elsewhere.

The strategic question is whether those changes strengthen or weaken the value thesis.

From “Who Wins?” to “Where Does Value Move?”

Chapter 14 is especially relevant here because it moves the discussion beyond the simple question of whether economic activity exists in a place.

The more important question is whether the place captures value from its participation in an economic network.

A location may receive capital without gaining durable capabilities.

It may create jobs without increasing the quality or security of those jobs.

It may attract a major operation while becoming dependent on decisions made elsewhere.

It may benefit from a new investment for years—or lose that activity when the network changes.

Dicken describes this tension in the context of global production networks. Places are connected to wider systems, but those connections do not guarantee that value will be retained locally. The bargaining power of firms and local economies matters, as does the ability of a location to develop capabilities that remain valuable within changing networks.

An acquisition can produce similar dynamics.

The buyer may bring capital, technology, customers, management expertise, and new capabilities into a location.

It may also centralize functions, remove duplication, change suppliers, relocate decision-making, or alter the employment base.

The same transaction can therefore strengthen one geographic node while weakening another.

That is why the question “How much value does this deal create?” is incomplete.

A more useful set of questions is:

Where is that value created?

Where is it captured?

Which locations carry the capabilities that make it possible?

Where could value be lost during integration?

These questions do not replace valuation.

They deepen it.

Geography Can Become a Source of Deal Risk

Geographic concentration is not automatically a weakness.

In some industries, concentration creates efficiency. A specialized manufacturing cluster may provide access to skilled labor, suppliers, infrastructure, research institutions, and customers that would be difficult to reproduce elsewhere.

The same concentration, however, can create exposure.

A business dependent on one facility, one labor market, one logistics corridor, or one regulatory jurisdiction may carry risks that are difficult to see in consolidated financial statements.

Integration can increase those risks.

Two companies may each have diversified operations before a transaction. After consolidation, a buyer may eliminate what appears to be redundant capacity and unintentionally increase concentration.

The resulting business may have lower cost and greater fragility.

This is where geography becomes a strategic M&A issue rather than simply a socioeconomic consideration.

A location can represent:

• a source of competitive advantage;
• a concentration of critical capability;
• a supply-chain dependency;
• a regulatory exposure;
• a labor-market dependency;
• a source of customer access;
• or an option for future expansion.

The transaction changes the ownership structure.

The buyer must determine which of those geographic characteristics should change with it.

The Deal Thesis Has a Geography

The strongest M&A strategies usually begin with a clear thesis.

The buyer knows why the asset matters, where the value is expected to come from, and what must happen after closing.

That thesis should also answer a geographic question:

Where must the business be strong for the thesis to work?

If the answer is a particular manufacturing region, the workforce in that region is part of the thesis.

If the answer is a technology cluster, the relevant talent and institutional relationships are part of the thesis.

If the answer is proximity to customers, distribution infrastructure, or a specialized supplier ecosystem, those geographic relationships are part of the thesis.

Once geography is recognized as part of the value proposition, several conventional M&A decisions become more precise.

The buyer can test whether a proposed synergy depends on removing a location.

It can identify whether a cost reduction threatens a capability.

It can determine whether a regional concentration is deliberate or accidental.

It can examine whether a transaction creates new dependencies.

And it can distinguish between a merely expensive location and one that is strategically expensive to lose.

This is also consistent with BCG’s current observation that the constraints on M&A are increasingly moving from capital and buyer appetite toward execution. Asset readiness, workable economics, financing resilience, organizational capacity, and regulatory clearance all determine whether a transaction can move from intention to completion.

Geography intersects with each of those execution questions.

An asset may be ready financially but difficult to separate operationally.

A facility may appear redundant but contain capabilities required for the business plan.

A cross-border transaction may have attractive economics but face regulatory or geopolitical constraints.

A workforce may be geographically concentrated in a way that makes integration assumptions unrealistic.

The geographic map therefore belongs beside the financial model, not somewhere after it.

Making Place Visible in M&A

Dicken’s central contribution to this discussion is not a formula for geographic due diligence.

It is a way of seeing.

His work shows that economic networks connect places without making their outcomes identical. Value creation, value enhancement, and value capture can occur at different points in a network. The gains from economic integration can be uneven, and the consequences are often experienced most directly at the local level.
M&A operates within that same geographic reality.

An acquisition can create significant enterprise value while shifting where capabilities, employment, capital, and decision-making reside.

For dealmakers, the practical implication is not to turn every transaction into a social-impact exercise.

It is to make the geographic consequences visible enough to test them against the investment thesis.

Before signing, ask:

Where is the value?

Where does the business depend on it?

Where is that value most vulnerable to integration?

Where can it move?

And what new concentration or fragility could the transaction create?

Those questions move geography from the background of the transaction into the deal conversation.

That is increasingly important in a market where M&A itself is becoming more geographically differentiated. The 2026 recovery has produced strong aggregate numbers, but the distribution of that activity varies sharply by region and transaction size.

The next question is therefore larger than whether M&A is recovering.

It is whether dealmakers understand where the recovery—and the value created by individual transactions—is actually taking place.

Because value does not exist only in the purchase price.

It exists in capabilities, relationships, capital, jobs, facilities, knowledge, and markets.

And all of those exist somewhere.

Continue the Conversation

The geography of deal value raises a strategic question for every dealmaker: Where is value created, where is it captured, and what happens to the places that carry the transaction?

Those questions will form part of the broader conversation at the 2026 Future of Dealmaking Summit, November 16–17 in New York, where M&A professionals, executives, investors, academics, and advisors will gather for thought leadership sessions, M&A Connects networking and one-on-one meetings, and the 25th Annual M&A Advisor Awards.

Continue the conversation at the 2026 Future of Dealmaking Summit.