THE VIEW

Zagros View on the Market

Zagros shares insight from across our global network to clarify the opportunities and risks shaping Germany and the wider European landscape. Our aim is simple: to keep clients and candidates a step ahead – navigating dynamic markets with clarity, confidence, and a cool eye for what matters next.

ECM: From Drought to Drizzle – With Sun Breaking Through Europe’s equity capital markets are thawing. IPOs and demergers are returning to major exchanges. We are nowhere near the 2021 surge, but momentum is real – and the next 12 to 18 months will be decisive. Three forces are powering the turn. First, private equity is reopening the exit window: assets held longer than planned are now credible IPO candidates, not merely bargaining chips for trade-sale pricing. Second, demergers are doing serious lifting. Spin-offs and carve-outs demand the same technical muscle as IPOs and are keeping benches sharp while valuations normalize. Third, regulators in Europe and the UK are nudging, not hindering – lighter-touch agendas are making listing conditions more accommodating without sacrificing investor protections.

Zagros sees Germany primed for a rebound – and a premium on advisers who blend global firepower with local fluency. Europe’s deal market isn’t roaring; it’s resetting. Value is coalescing into fewer, larger transactions even as overall volumes soften. The easy money era has ended. In its place: selectivity, precision, and a premium on certainty. Germany sits at the heart of this shift. Confidence is building for a domestic rebound – most notably across traditional German industries and the Mittelstand’s deep reservoir of carve-outs. The mandate from clients is unmistakable: lock the financing, map the tax, pre-brief the regulators. In a market that prizes predictability, firms that fuse global execution power with German know-how will set the pace. Mittelstand owners increasingly treat carve-outs not as distress signals but as strategic tune-ups – ways to sharpen focus, surface value, and accelerate investment in core capabilities.

The Talent Equation As activity returns, firms are rebuilding with intent. Law practices, Big Four advisors, and consultancies are reconstituting ECM benches after years of contraction, and the hiring brief is unambiguous. Versatility beats narrow specialization: teams must pivot seamlessly among IPOs, demergers, and private M&A as conditions shift. Senior hires must arrive with a business case – portable relationships, cross-border fluency, and credible origination plans. And above all, teams are being engineered for certainty: integrated capability across financing, tax, regulatory, and antitrust so execution risk is contained before it compounds.