Merger-and-acquisition activity may have slowed during the third quarter of the year, but it’s unlikely to stay slow, the results of a new McKinsey survey suggest.¹ In this survey, we asked finance and other senior executives to weigh in on how M&A will change in the coming months and years: the expected size of deals, the capabilities in place, and the amount of attention devoted to differences in organizational cultures.

The results show that in spite of the difficult economy, most executives still think M&A is an important strategy for growth. In fact, nearly half of the respondents expect their companies to explore more deals in the next 12 months than in the past 12, and small majorities expect them to start or complete at least as many, if not more.² In addition, nearly half of the respondents report that their companies are looking outside the core business for new ways to grow. There’s no consensus on whether deal size will increase, but executives do indicate that they expect to focus more on deals that bring specific strategic advantages, such as new geographies, products, or intellectual property. The results also indicate that many companies still need to build critical capabilities, including integration planning, responding to cultural issues, and establishing standardized deal teams. That effort may well be complicated by a striking number of areas in which CFOs’ opinions differ from those of other C-level executives on topics as basic as which deals to do and what capabilities a company has.