Through eight and a half months, 2026 has produced as much merger and acquisition activity by dollar volume as the whole of 2025, and more deals by count.
The usual assumption is that a 10-year Treasury yield above 5% closes the window. John Collins says corporate balance sheets are strong enough and credit spreads narrow enough that the strategic buyers have not flinched — it is the buyers who need borrowed money who are feeling it.
"I think, in a lot of ways, the activity begets activity."
Collins is global co-head of mergers and acquisitions at Morgan Stanley and spent years covering health care before that. He was speaking at his own firm's global health care conference, immediately after Thermo Fisher's chief executive.
The full segment is covered here so you can skip it.
Here are the 4 arguments that matter.
👤 Guest: John Collins, global co-head of M&A at Morgan Stanley
🎙️ Host: Sara Eisen, who anchors CNBC's Squawk on the Street, reporting from Morgan Stanley's global health care conference
🧩 Other segments: Dan Niles of Niles Investment Management; Marc Casper, Chairman and CEO of Thermo Fisher Scientific; Matt Hougan, CIO of Bitwise Asset Management; and CBOE's Oliver Renick on gold options
📰 Published: 15 September 2026 on the Squawk on the Street feed
🟣 Apple Podcasts | 🔗 Episode page | ⏱️ 4 min
Key Takeaways
Eight and a half months of 2026 have matched all of 2025 on deal value, and beaten it on deal count
Boardrooms are treating acquisitions as a growth strategy rather than an opportunistic trade
In pharma the driver is structural: patent cliffs create negative organic growth that has to be refilled
Activity is self-reinforcing — companies that fell behind the active acquirers now feel they have to catch up
High biotech valuations are not stopping deals, because sellers without a sales force want to be bought
A 5% 10-year has not hit strategic buyers yet, but it is reaching financial sponsors
Balance sheets are strong and spreads narrow, so the all-in cost of borrowing is still not high
1. 2026 Has Matched 2025
Eisen opened on the appetite for deals, starting in health care because that is where the conference was.
Collins called the environment high and super active, and gave the comparison in two units.
By dollar volume, 2026 through eight and a half months matches the whole of 2025. By number of deals, it is already ahead.
The forward view is the part he emphasized. "we don't see it slowing down necessarily."
2. Patent Cliffs Are the Buyer
Asked why, Collins said the answer is partly sector-specific but mostly comes down to growth.
What he hears in boardrooms is a standing strategy, not a reaction. Chief executives want to keep thinking about acquisitions "in order to continue to grow", and he named Thermo Fisher's Marc Casper, who had just been on, as an example.
For large companies the motivation is access to faster-growing markets.
In pharma the arithmetic is negative without deals. "I think the idea of for some of the larger companies of making sure that they have access to markets that are growing more quickly, that's very important in pharma, for instance, where you have natural sort of negative growth through patent cliffs."
So the activity concentrates on pipelines. "We've seen a ton of activity around looking to sort of refill their pipelines."
3. Activity Begets Activity
Eisen put the pattern she sees from the outside: most mornings there is a $12 billion deal for a company she has barely heard of, bought by one of the majors at a significant premium. She asked whether that continues.
Collins said it does, and gave a competitive reason. "I think, in a lot of ways, the activity begets activity." Some companies have pressed their advantage; others now feel they have to catch up.
The seller side is the half people get wrong. Every deal needs both, and "the valuations for biotech companies are pretty high."
High valuations have not made boards unwilling. "And so when somebody knocks on the door, biotech boards are generally not always, but more open to seeing if now is the right time to become part of a larger company."
Eisen supplied the reason and he confirmed it. For a company in the middle of developing a therapy without a sales force, marketing or that expertise, "They typically do look to sell."
4. What 5% Has Changed
Eisen's last question was rates: the 10-year is now above 5%, and she asked whether that changes how clients think about deals that need financing.
The immediate answer is no. "we haven't seen an immediate impact from that."
The reason is the balance sheet and the spread, not the base rate. Corporate balance sheets are generally strong, spreads are still fairly narrow, and "So the overall cost of borrowing is still not super high."
He would not leave it there. "That said, higher for longer rates no doubt starts to impact the way companies think about it and particularly valuations." The cost of money, he said, has to be factored into what a business is worth paying for.
The place it is already showing up is leveraged buyers. "Where we have seen maybe a little more impact is with financial sponsors, who just naturally rely more on debt to complete" transactions.
Bonus Insights
Eisen opened on his age rather than his job, teasing him for being an old health care hand and then walking it back twice; Collins' only answer was that he is not a young one.
He answered a question about his own client on the record. Asked about Thermo Fisher, a company that has done plenty of deals, he called Marc Casper an example of the boardroom appetite he was describing rather than declining to comment.
The seller half of the market is what he thinks gets missed. Twice in a four-minute segment he brought the answer back to why a biotech board says yes, rather than to why a buyer says go.
Collins' bottom line is that this deal cycle is being driven by a structural growth problem rather than by cheap money — pharma companies buying pipelines to cover patent cliffs, and laggards buying to catch up — which is why a 10-year above 5% has slowed the private-equity buyers before it has slowed the corporate ones.
Products, Companies & Tools Mentioned
Morgan Stanley (Collins' firm and the host of the health care conference; his read is that 2026 has already matched 2025 on deal value)
Thermo Fisher Scientific (Cited by name as a serial acquirer whose chief executive had been interviewed minutes earlier)
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