Market gyrations, rising prices, military conflicts and artificial intelligence worries have posed challenges for dealmaking in Asia and elsewhere. But pockets of activity in places like Australia, Japan and China have managed to keep transactions humming along.

The region’s resilience bodes well heading into the final three months of the year, with advisers hopeful of progress in mergers and acquisitions — provided there aren’t major missteps. The fourth quarter “will be defined by discipline, not dealmaking volume,” said Sarah Su, a partner at law firm Freshfields. “Clients remain focused on certainty of execution over scale.”

A big chunk of deals has been coming from developed markets including Japan, where bidding wars are becoming more commonplace.

One ongoing battle is over price comparison site Kakaku.com, with EQT AB on Tuesday raising its offer — again by just ¥1 ($0.01) — in a faceoff with Bain Capital and LY Corp. Governance reforms have fundamentally reshaped Japanese boardroom behavior, driving a wave of transactions, according to Ee-Ching Tay, who is head of Asia Pacific M&A at Barclays Plc.

Asia’s M&A market as a whole “remains remarkably resilient” despite the geopolitical uncertainty and market volatility, she said. Even so, M&A volumes in Japan were lower than the third quarter last year, while transactions for APAC as a whole slipped 8% to about $311 billion, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

Valuation gaps between buyers and sellers continue to be a drag, along with concerns over energy costs and upward pressure on interest rates, with US Treasury yields hitting multiyear highs. Australia has plowed on: M&A volume in the country nearly doubled to $55 billion, and more is potentially in the works. While gold miner Northern Star Resources Ltd. just rejected a roughly $27 billion takeover approach from South Africa’s Gold Fields Ltd., there may be a sweetened bid.

EQT has also made an offer for Cleanaway Waste Management Ltd. “Private equity firms will be a key driver of deals as they accelerate capital deployment and portfolio exits,” said Ed Wittig, co-head of M&A in APAC at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. “A growing number of global businesses are also evaluating deals as part of their growth strategy, either carving out certain assets or looking at acquisitions.”In the increasingly busy AI sphere, a consortium backed by BlackRock Inc. and IFM Investors Pty has entered exclusive talks for a potential acquisition of Stack Infrastructure Inc.’s data centers in APAC, people familiar with the matter have said.

KKR & Co. expects South Korea to benefit from its role in the AI supply chain, while Chinese companies are increasingly looking at M&A strategically to expand in APAC and beyond, according to Wittig. Infrastructure, business services, energy, industrials and consumer are among the most active sectors, he said.

There’s also India, which has been a key market for global investors, especially for deals in areas such as infrastructure and technology, even if much of the recent focus has been on the initial public offerings of National Stock Exchange of India Ltd. and Jio Platforms Ltd.

“M&A is increasingly becoming a tool for Indian companies to compress the growth curve, whether through consolidation, capability acquisition or faster access to new markets,” said Gautam Suseel, a partner at Khaitan & Co. Like China, more companies in India are looking at cross-border M&A to expand globally, Suseel said.

Still, scrapped transactions like Zijin Gold International Co.’s plan to buy Canadian miner Allied Gold Corp. show that turbulence persists, often driven by outside factors beyond dealmakers’ control.

“Success will depend on strategic fit, careful execution and the ability to navigate an increasingly complex landscape,” Freshfields’ Su said.