Road through a mountain valley during the day

Global Consumer Group Delivers in 2024; Eyes Bright 2025

Baird’s Global Consumer Investment Banking Group navigated an improved, yet still challenging market in 2024 with creativity and resilience. We expanded coverage areas, adding talented laterals to partner with our tenured all-star team1, and were laser-focused on delivering exceptional outcomes for our clients. This resulted in the highest transaction volume for the group since 2021.

The deal environment was challenged by many headwinds. At Baird, we focused on what we could control: i) effectively and passionately communicating the powerful growth stories of our clients, ii) giving trusted advice even when it wasn’t easy, and iii) leaning into decades-long relationships to maintain engagement, build conviction and increase certainty in our transaction outcomes. We continued our track record of advising the world’s most beloved brands, highlighted by the sale of Tropical Smoothie Cafe to Blackstone, the sale of CCM Hockey to Altor Equity Partners and the sale of Bugaboo to Mubadala Capital.

2024 Consumer Group By the Numbers

Transaction Volume
  • 33 closed advisory and capital raising transactions
  • $11B+ total M&A volume
  • $4.2B+ capital raised
High Quality Outcomes
  • 11.7x average consumer sellside EBITDA multiple
  • 40% of our sellsides delivered strategic outcomes
Global Team & Reach
  • 7 cross-border transactions
  • ~50 consumer bankers globally
Consumer Deal Diversity
  • 11 different consumer sub-sectors completed transactions in 2024
  • ~$500M average M&A transaction

 

Select 2024 Baird Consumer Transactions

 

 

2025 Outlook

We are optimistic about a market more conducive to consumer M&A activity as well as the return of the IPO market, which has largely been quiet over the past three years. That said, we've proven that we can get deals done for our clients in the most challenging environments. Our learnings from a transaction environment that required constant vigilance and persistence will continue to serve our clients well.

Baird closed the book on 2024 with a healthy engaged backlog and promising pipeline of future Baird clients in 2025. Reach out to our industry-leading team to discuss these transactions and activity in your coverage area.

CONTACT A MEMBER OF OUR GLOBAL CONSUMER TEAM

1 Source: Dealogic and publicly available data; Includes M&A transactions <$1B in enterprise value and all IPO transactions in the US across all consumer sectors, 2013-2022.