Navigating M&A as a corporate real estate leader

Key highlights

• Involve CRE in M&A due diligence early. CRE teams should be involved in M&A due diligence before the deal closes to identify property liabilities, lease commitments, and portfolio redundancies up front. By integrating early, CRE leaders can influence key integration decisions—including which assets to retain, consolidate or exit—ensuring that real estate strategy aligns with the business from Day 1.

• Optimize the portfolio for growth and efficiency. M&A is a catalyst to optimize the real estate footprint—not only to cut costs, but to reposition assets to support future growth. Firms should proactively identify redundant properties, plan strategic exits and reinvest in growth markets and innovation hubs. A well-executed strategy ensures that the merged company operates leaner and stronger, balancing efficiency with future-focused location and talent goals.

• Implement smart office solutions for seamless integration. Data-driven decisions are essential post-merger. CRE teams should integrate workplace management platforms, use occupancy analytics to track space utilization and deploy smart office solutions to streamline post-merger space planning and enhance efficiency. A unified tech infrastructure helps manage security access, facility maintenance and space planning more efficiently, enabling a seamless transition for employees while optimizing operational costs.

• Align real estate strategy with the new business model. Real estate strategy should reflect how the business is evolving operationally, culturally and structurally. Integration planning must consider impacts to the supply chain, internal processes and governance in addition to the physical space. This alignment becomes especially important when business models shift. If the merged entity is pivoting toward digital banking, that could mean closing branches while expanding technology hubs. If the focus is wealth management, the priority may be prime client-facing office spaces over back-office real estate. CRE leaders must work closely with executive leadership to ensure that investments reflect where the business is headed.

Why CRE is central to M&A success

M&A in the financial services sector has long been a strategic lever for growth, diversification, and technological advancement. As firms navigate regulatory shifts, competitive pressures and the demand for digital transformation, M&A remains a critical pathway for achieving scale and operational efficiency. But as the pace and complexity of transactions accelerate, the margin for integration missteps narrows, especially as it relates to real estate strategy. Overlooking CRE during integration can lead to redundant space, employee disruption and missed synergy targets.

The challenge for CRE leaders is not only to manage physical assets, but to strategically position the portfolio to support transformation while minimizing disruption. With appetite for dealmaking on the rise in financial services, aligning real estate strategy with integration goals in a complex environment is becoming increasingly urgent. In fact, 76% of financial services CEOs who made a significant acquisition in the last three years plan to make one or more acquisitions in the next three years, according to PwC’s 2025 global CEO survey. Additionally, JLL’s Future of Work Survey revealed that 61% of financial services CRE decision-makers marked growing revenue through expansion, M&A and new markets as a top corporate goal for their business in the next five years.

Without a well-defined transition strategy, firms risk inefficiencies, cultural disconnects and increased operational costs. CRE decision-makers must be prepared to act swiftly and strategically, get involved early in the M&A process and engage specialized expertise to enhance integration. As M&A continues to reshape the financial services sector, the most successful organizations will be those that proactively align their real estate portfolios with business strategy, supporting cultural cohesion and creating long-term value.

The global M&A landscape

Dealmaking is on the rise amid strategic realignment

Global M&A activity in financial services rebounded sharply in 2024, with total deal value climbing despite a decline in overall volume. Much of the activity was driven by the need to gain scale, simplify portfolios and respond to mounting digital and regulatory pressures. Banks are merging to consolidate market share and reduce the cost of compliance, insurance firms are acquiring specialized capabilities or shedding non-core lines, and wealth managers are targeting alternative asset platforms to diversify fee platforms. In all cases, M&A is being used to accelerate transformation—organically and geographically.

While activity is growing globally, the M&A landscape in financial services remains highly regionalized. Across regions, real estate implications are tied closely to market maturity, regulatory outlook and the subsector dynamics driving deal flow.

North America

In the U.S. and Canada, the banking and fintech sectors continue to lead deal volumes. Strategic combinations among mid-size banks—driven by margin pressure, technology investment needs and regulatory preparedness—have fueled an uptick in domestic consolidation. Meanwhile, fintech M&A is focused on acquiring capabilities in digital payments, fraud protection and customer experience. These deals often lead to significant real estate decisions, including branch network optimization, hub-and-spoke reconfigurations and workplace investment in tech-forward cities. With expectations of a more accommodative regulatory environment under the new U.S. administration, financial services firms could push forward on previously shelved transactions.

Across the U.S. and Canada, many financial institutions are shifting investment toward markets that align with long-term talent and innovation strategies. Growth cities like Charlotte, Dallas, Austin, Salt Lake City, and Calgary continue to attract interest among financial services companies due to their expanding financial ecosystems, high-quality labor pools and business-friendly environments. Institutions are also evaluating ways to simplify their real estate footprint in legacy locations, particularly in places where occupancy patterns no longer justify holding underutilized assets. To be effective, these adjustments should be phased and strategic, minimizing disruption while freeing capital for reinvestment. At the same time, fintech and digital banking trends are reshaping workplace demand, pushing companies toward more agile models, like flexible layouts, coworking hubs and urban satellite offices in growth cities. For wealth management firms, the focus is shifting: they are doubling down on client-facing space in key wealth markets while streamlining back-office locations.

EMEA

Deal activity in EMEA was more muted in volume, with significant activity in insurance and wealth management. Firms are consolidating to gain efficiency, deepen advisory platforms and compete in cross-border markets. London, Frankfurt, and Zurich remain central nodes for regional headquarters and private client operations, but cost pressures are prompting firms to optimize their real estate footprints.

Companies continue to strengthen their positions in key financial centers, while scaling shared services and back-office functions in cost-efficient cities like Warsaw and Madrid. While London remains a critical global hub, firms are complementing that presence with expanded coverage across continental Europe—focusing on jurisdictions that offer regulatory clarity and access to multilingual talent. This allows for a distributed but coordinated footprint that aligns with both commercial and compliance priorities. M&A in the region often requires a careful balancing act: rationalizing legacy space while maintaining access to high-net-worth markets and regulatory jurisdictions. ESG regulations and hybrid working preferences are prompting upgrades to sustainable buildings and smart office infrastructure. M&A has also driven firms to reduce exposure to aging legacy assets and optimize lease portfolios across Europe.

Asia Pacific

Asia Pacific continues to be shaped by domestic and intra-regional consolidation, with a particular focus on digital banking and life insurance. Japan, India and Southeast Asia have seen a rise in transactions designed to expand market share and build retirement and wealth management platforms. In parallel, large banks and insurers are acquiring digital platforms to reach younger, mobile-first consumer bases. These deals often come with integration of back-office and operations hubs, which puts pressure on CRE teams to scale up regional service centers.

The region continues to see growth in strategic tech-forward markets like Singapore, Bengaluru and Manila, where financial institutions are expanding digital infrastructure and operational delivery centers. These markets provide scalability, high technical capability and alignment with the region’s evolving regulatory environment. Financial services firms are leveraging this expansion to support both customer-facing services and integrated support functions, creating a footprint that can flex with the business over time. M&A integration strategies in the region often require careful navigation of country-specific regulations while balancing operational scalability and cultural considerations. Southeast Asia and Japan continue to see government-driven bank mergers aimed at improving competitiveness and resilience. Meanwhile, foreign financial institutions are selectively exiting non-core APAC markets to focus on scalable growth centers.

Portfolio optimization and efficiency

A successful portfolio strategy balances efficiency with intentionality—it’s about creating a real estate footprint that is lean, future-ready and positioned to advance the strategic goals of the new enterprise.

Mergers inevitably reveal real estate redundancies including overlapping branches, duplicative office hubs or underutilized assets acquired through legacy growth. But identifying excess space is only the beginning. Portfolio optimization in an M&A context isn’t just about cost-cutting; it’s about reshaping the footprint to reflect the new business model, talent strategy and customer reach. The most successful transitions are those where CRE teams act early, collaborate cross-functionally and approach space decisions with a blend of data and future-focused vision.

In the office segment, BMO’s $16B acquisition of a regional U.S. bank—the largest-ever by a Canadian bank—was supported by a structured integration strategy. The bank established a 40% synergy target, and engaged with JLL Consulting pre-close to help deliver $30M in cost savings. Working collaboratively, the JLL team prioritized portfolio data integration and cleanup, identified rapid synergy savings opportunities and validated scenario feasibility with the business ahead of Legal Day 1. That process surfaced $24.5M in CRE synergies for the office portfolio, including $7M in first-year savings and a 40% rentable square footage reduction in footprint. The effort also projected nearly 50% annual cost savings and positioned the CRE function as a key stakeholder across M&A workstreams.

On the retail side, Webster Bank and Sterling Bancorp used their merger as an opportunity to consolidate and reevaluate the purpose and performance of each branch across their combined footprint. The CRE team engaged JLL as a strategic real estate partner and conducted a strategic review that considered not only lease terms and branch overlap, but also the distinct value each location provided to customers. With overlapping coverage in the Northeast U.S. and similar community banking profiles, the team executed a multi-phased optimization plan, beginning with a strategic branch review and progressing to the consolidation of corporate offices. Importantly, Webster viewed real estate as a platform to reflect the new brand and workforce model. With JLL’s support, the company used the integration to modernize its headquarters in Stamford and implement new workplace standards across key locations.

Whether it be an office or retail-focused merger, CRE leaders need to start with robust data—space utilization metrics, headcount projections, lease obligations and market trends—and complement it with scenario planning to optimize effectively. Consolidation strategies should be tested for downstream impacts on commuting patterns, customer access and ESG performance. For firms with owned real estate, this is also an opportunity to unlock value through selective sale-leasebacks or asset repositioning.

Ultimately, real estate is one of the most visible expressions of strategic direction during a merger. Whether expanding into new markets, consolidating for efficiency or modernizing for the future of work, location strategy must be grounded in rigorous scenario planning and aligned with the newly formed organization’s mission and growth trajectory. Space consolidation should be an enabler of transformation—not just a byproduct.

Seamless tech for seamless integration

During a financial services merger, real estate technology may fall low on the priority list—but neglecting it can delay integration, inflate operational costs and create confusion for employees navigating the new organization. Smart office solutions are critical not only for streamlining space management, but also for providing the visibility, control and adaptability institutions need in the early post-close period.

In one notable example, JLL worked with a U.S. bank that quadrupled in size through a series of acquisitions, helping the institution define and implement a long-term CRE technology strategy. The goal was to create a centralized platform for managing a significantly expanded portfolio—spanning leases, workplace occupancy, maintenance and capital planning. The project involved assessing legacy systems, eliminating redundancies and consolidating into a unified, scalable infrastructure. While the client’s expansion had been fast-paced, JLL helped the bank take a more deliberate approach to technology planning to enable long-term integration success.

Smart office tools such as occupancy analytics, space reservation systems, access control and hybrid work platforms support more than just daily functionality. They also generate real-time data that can help CRE teams assess how space is being used, which locations are underperforming and where additional investment may be needed. This is especially important in hybrid work environments, where headcount no longer always dictates square footage in a 1:1 ratio.

When thoughtfully deployed, technology helps bridge the cultural divide during transitions, easing friction and keeping teams aligned through change. Branded digital signage, unified AV systems and consistent workplace reservation tools signal cohesion across formerly separate organizations. Additionally, tech integration can support sustainability goals by tracking energy usage and enabling dynamic scheduling, both of which are increasingly relevant to ESG reporting.

Rather than viewing technology implementation as a technical exercise, CRE leaders should approach it as a strategic enabler of integration. With the right systems in place, organizations can act on data faster, reduce operating friction and provide a workplace experience that feels intuitive—regardless of an employee’s legacy company.

Driving M&A value with CRE strategy

Real estate plays a pivotal role in translating M&A ambition into operational reality. Institutions that treat CRE as a strategic lever rather than a downstream function are better positioned to unlock value, retain talent and execute on growth. Success depends on early involvement during due diligence, partnership with CRE advisors, thoughtful portfolio optimization that balances cost with market positioning, smart tech integration to enable seamless transitions and a footprint that reflects the new business model. Each factor in the decision-making process—including location, technology or workplace design—sends a strong message about how the companies will move forward together and where the business is headed.