Recently Mergermarket released their latest update on quarterly global M&A activity. Mergermarket, part of The Mergermarket Group, is an independent M&A intelligence tool used by financial institutions to originate deals. It provides proprietary intelligence on potential deal flow, potential mandates, and valuations. I have been using their data for years and have always found it to be quite accurate and compelling.
As most analysts have been indicating, M&A activity as measured by volume of deals is on par with the first quarter of 2010 and is up dramatically when compared to the same quarter in 2009 (which was the bottom of the last M&A cycle). This is shown below – see the red line and red boxes.