M&A market logjam due to tariff uncertainty

Worthington's CEO notes that the M&A market has been slow due to uncertainty injected by tariffs. While there was pent-up demand and expectations for a deal surge in 2025 and 2026, the April 2 tariff announcements stalled activity.

“In 2024, late 2024, people thought that 2025 would be the year that the logjam broke and there’d be lots of M&A activity, that didn’t happen. 2025 heading into 2026 people thought that was going to be true. And it was for the first 90 days of the year. And then April 2 came along and uncertainty was injected back into the market. So it’s a little slow, but there’s pent-up demand there.”

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