The firm says the underlying conditions for further consolidation remain intact, with strong balance sheets, high asset quality, and renewed transaction momentum at the end of 2025 and into 2026.
Presented in the eighth edition of Deloitte’s Central and Eastern European Banking M&A Study, the findings suggest that the region’s banks are entering the next phase of consolidation from a position of strength rather than stress. The pressure to sell may have eased for smaller, less efficient players because profitability has held up better than expected. At the same time, stronger banks now have more room to pursue acquisitions as a growth strategy.
That combination helps explain why 2025 looked quieter in terms of deal count yet still produced several larger strategic transactions. Rather than a broad rush of opportunistic deals, the market appears to be moving toward more selective consolidation, with banking groups sharpening their core positions and exiting businesses or geographies that no longer offer sufficient scale.
The broader backdrop has also improved. Deloitte said every country in the region returned to a growth path in 2025, while labor markets remained tight and inflation stabilized at more moderate levels following its normalization in 2024. Even so, the report argues that geopolitical uncertainty continues to cast a shadow over both inflation and growth prospects.
Against that background, the resilience of the banking sector remains one of the more striking regional stories. Asset quality has stayed strong, capital adequacy remains high, and market valuations rose significantly in 2025. That, in turn, gives banks the flexibility to grow both organically and through acquisitions.
Deloitte’s central message is not that the M&A cycle has stalled, but that it is evolving. The region’s banks are still consolidating, but the logic is increasingly strategic rather than reactive. Market leaders are using acquisitions to reinforce positions they see as core, while weaker or subscale assets are gradually being pushed out of portfolios.
“The sector’s profitability in the region remained favorable in 2025, despite a lower interest-rate environment, rising operating costs, and still-muted corporate lending in some markets. This was supported by further improving portfolio quality, declining NPL and Stage 3 ratios, and low risk costs,” said Gergő Molnár, a director in Deloitte Hungary’s financial advisory business.
That profitability has reduced forced selling pressure in part of the market. But it has also increased the acquisition capacity of buyers. With capital ratios still strong across the region, banks looking to expand through acquisitions have more resources to deploy, which is one reason Deloitte expects the consolidation trend to continue.
“The regional banking M&A market showed a more subdued picture in 2025 in terms of transaction count, but several strategically significant deals were completed, and transaction activity has picked up over the past two quarters,” said Zsolt Vajda, lead partner of Deloitte Hungary’s financial advisory business.
“Leading banking groups are actively looking for acquisition opportunities to strengthen their strategic positions, so we expect regional banking consolidation to continue in the coming years as well. At the same time, more interest has recently emerged in acquiring non-bank financial service providers, such as leasing companies and payment service providers,” he noted.
That last point is important because it widens the lens beyond banks themselves. The report suggests that regional dealmaking is no longer focused only on traditional bank-to-bank consolidation. Adjacent financial services businesses, especially those linked to payments and other scalable platforms, are drawing more attention as banking groups seek growth, efficiency, and distribution advantages beyond classic retail banking.
One of the more notable features of this year’s study is the space given to blockchain-based finance, tokenization, and stablecoins. Deloitte argues that these are no longer fringe experiments but increasingly relevant parts of financial infrastructure.
The report briefly reviews developments in the payments sector, securitization, and the growing connection between blockchain technology and financial services. It concludes that the industry is building more quickly than before in the blockchain and crypto space as digital assets and on-chain solutions move from pilots toward the mainstream.
According to the study, the three most common banking use cases are crypto trading and custody, stablecoins, and tokenization, largely because each is now seeing meaningful institutional and retail demand.
“By now, there is practically no leading American or European bank that does not have a blockchain and crypto strategy. Another question is how much of that they communicate publicly, because blockchain and crypto are currently a major competitive arena among banks,” said Csaba Csomor, Deloitte Central Europe’s lead for blockchain and crypto services.
“Most of the public communication has come from the stablecoin segment, where both a global and a European banking stablecoin consortium have been formed, with participating banks such as Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, UBS, BNP Paribas, KBC, UniCredit, and others. Meanwhile, Société Générale has issued its own euro and dollar stablecoins. We are pleased that, through Deloitte’s global blockchain and digital assets team, we can support banks’ active buildout in the blockchain and crypto space,” he added.
That view reflects a broader shift in how major institutions now approach digital finance. What was once treated mainly as an innovation track or future watchlist item is being folded into live strategic planning. For regional banks, that does not necessarily mean moving at the pace of global investment banks, but does suggest that the competitive field is widening beyond branch networks, loan books, and deposit bases.
For now, however, the more immediate story in Central and Eastern Europe remains the same one Deloitte has been tracking for years: strong banks, still-profitable franchises, and a consolidation cycle that is not over. If anything, 2025 may prove to have been less a pause than a reset; fewer transactions on the surface, but a clearer build-up toward the next wave of strategically driven deals.
Editor’s note: For more detailed reporting on the local banking scene, see “OTP Leans on Regional Strength, Approves HUF 300 bln Dividend,” in the April 24, 2026, issue of the Budapest Business Journal.
This article was first published in the Budapest Business Journal print issue of May 8, 2026.
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