For most of the last decade, Bangladesh M&A has been treated as a rounding error in regional deal databases. Mergermarket logs perhaps two or three transactions a year against the country1. Refinitiv lists a handful more2. Tracxn's Bangladesh acquisitions tracker — the deepest of the imported sources — recorded thirty-three lifetime transactions of any meaningful scale through end-20243. Speak to any partner at a Dhaka law firm, however, and a different picture emerges: one of quiet, persistent activity that simply does not surface in international press releases. 2025 was the year the gap between the public record and the private reality became impossible to ignore.
The headline number: USD 124M across 12 announced deals
Across calendar 2025, our internal tracker — calibrated against Tracxn, Dealroom and Mergermarket and supplemented with disclosed filings recovered directly from RJSC — logged twelve announced or substantially-confirmed M&A transactions involving a Bangladeshi target or acquirer4. Combined disclosed deal value reached approximately USD 124 million. The single largest contributor was the ShopUp + Sary merger, formalised under the SILQ Group banner — a cross-border combination that placed a regional logistics-and-commerce platform onto the regional deal map for the first time5. Strip SILQ out and the remaining eleven deals still aggregate to north of USD 40 million, distributed across pharma, F&B, fintech and professional services.
Twelve transactions sounds modest until the longer arc is considered. Across the fifteen-year window from 2010 to end-2025, Bangladesh recorded only thirty-three lifetime acquisitions of any meaningful scale3. Cumulative ecosystem value created (the sum of disclosed deal values plus pre-money valuations of the businesses absorbed) crossed BDT 1 billion only in the last few years6. 2025 alone contributed roughly a third of that lifetime total. The market is not large. It is, however, accelerating.
Sector breakdown: where the money actually moved
The 2025 mix tells you something about where the structural consolidation pressure now sits. The table below maps each sector to its share of disclosed value, deal count, and the dominant transaction logic.
| Sector | Deals | Value | Dominant logic |
|---|---|---|---|
| Logistics & commerce | 1 | ~52% | Cross-border roll-up; SILQ Group consolidation5 |
| Pharmaceuticals | 3 | ~18% | Listed-acquirer absorption of family-owned formulations7 |
| Fintech & financial services | 2 | ~12% | Strategic-investor structures; Bangladesh Bank-gated8 |
| F&B / QSR | 1 | ~9% | Mid-market chain consolidation9 |
| Tech / SaaS | 3 | ~6% | Acqui-hire mechanics; thin recurring-revenue base10 |
| Education, retail, services | 2 | ~3% | One professional-services rollup; one tutoring chain |
Two patterns deserve attention. First, pharma is the only domestic sector producing reliable, repeat deal flow at sub-USD-15M tickets: listed acquirers absorbing family-owned formulations is the most predictable mechanic in the market right now7. Second, tech transactions remained almost universally acqui-hire-priced, with talent-retention compensation and earnouts replacing classical equity multiples. Standalone SaaS exits at meaningful multiples remained rare.
What the numbers do not tell you
Twelve announced deals sit on top of an unknown — but materially larger — population of unannounced transactions. Conversations with three Dhaka M&A advisory boutiques in Q1 2026 suggest a working ratio of roughly three private closes for every public one, particularly at the under-BDT-10-crore SME level11. Most of these are share transfers under the Companies Act 1994 filed quietly via Form 117 with RJSC, with the parties having no commercial reason to issue a press release12. If that ratio is directionally correct, the true 2025 deal count sits closer to forty, with aggregate value somewhere in the USD 150–180M range.
That gap is the single most important fact about the Bangladesh M&A market today. It is large enough to support real platform economics — and almost completely invisible to anyone relying on imported deal databases.
Multiples: what businesses actually trade for
Disclosed multiples in 2025 cluster more tightly than founders typically assume. SME services and B2C retail businesses changed hands at seller-discretionary-earnings multiples of 1.5x to 3.0x, with the upper end reserved for businesses with documented three-year financials, clean RJSC filings and a credible owner-transition plan13. Manufacturing, particularly in pharma and light engineering, traded at EBITDA multiples of 4–6x — meaningfully below comparable Indian transactions, reflecting a discount that bakes in regulatory friction, foreign-exchange exit complexity, and shallower buyer pools14. SaaS and digital-first businesses with verifiable MRR transacted at revenue multiples in the 1.5–3x band; the very small number of true ARR-driven targets reached above 4x but only when flagged for strategic-acquirer interest from regional platforms.
The 2026 setup
Three structural shifts make 2026 likely to outpace 2025. First, a post-pandemic generation of SME founders is hitting genuine succession age — the family-handover default is breaking down faster than anticipated, with several Daily Star and Financial Express founder profiles flagging deliberate sale conversations through Q4 202515. Second, BSEC's gradually clarifying stance on private-company share transfers — particularly the SME exemption thresholds confirmed in the February 2026 interpretive note — is reducing the regulatory dead-weight on sub-BDT-10-crore deals8. Third, the local LP base is, for the first time, large enough to absorb mid-cap equity tickets without requiring a foreign syndicate, with three domestic funds closing fresh vehicles between October 2025 and February 2026.
None of these are sufficient on their own. Together they produce the early conditions of a real M&A market — a market where deals are sourced through a marketplace rather than personal network, where regulatory timelines are predictable rather than political, where the buyer pool is deep enough to clear at fair-market multiples rather than fire-sale ones.
Methodology
The Exit.bd 2025 tracker counts only transactions that meet four criteria: (a) a Bangladeshi target or acquirer is one of the principal counterparties; (b) the deal is publicly announced or substantially confirmed via at least two independent sources, including a domestic press reference; (c) majority equity (defined as >50%) changes hands, or a clear strategic-control condition is met; and (d) consideration is denominated in BDT or USD with a disclosed or reliably inferred figure. Pure minority-interest financings, distressed asset sales, and intra-group reorganisations are excluded. Deal values reported here are headline disclosed figures and have not been adjusted for earnouts, working-capital trueups or escrowed retention amounts. Historical aggregates draw on Tracxn, Dealroom, Mergermarket, BSEC monthly bulletins and reconstructed RJSC filings; all figures are directional and subject to revision.