MacFadyen: Cleaning out the Inbox
July 6, 2009
This past weekend, I was reminded, yet again, that fireworks are probably best left to the professionals, or at least people who hadn’t spent the previous two hours playing beer pong. I’m not sure what exactly it was that we lit, but the package advertised 200 grams of something. In hindsight, they don’t usually advertise that sort of thing unless it’s a lot.
It only took us one attempt to screw up. The platform fell sideways and proceeded to launch scorching fireballs into our small crowd of onlookers. Some of the fireballs started birthing their own fireballs, which led to exactly 7 seconds of utter frenzy that can only be compared to the scene from Airplane! – the one after Julie Hagerty’s character asked if anyone on board knew how to fly a plane.
So what does this have to do with deals? Nothing really, but those seven seconds reminded me of the onslaught of M&A data that has been filling my inbox since July -- data, coming from every direction, that seems just as nocuous.
From Thomson Reuters, global M&A is down more than 40% in the first half, with more than half of that activity coming from just three sectors. From Dealogic, the private equity space saw an 82% drop in global buyout volume for the first half. From Robert W. Baird, middle-market M&A fell by a quarter. Various boutiques sent along updates as well, covering specific segments. Peachtree Media Advisors recorded a 61% decline in reported deal volume in the digital media space; Freeman & Co. noted that PE investments in financial services were off by 78%; and The Jordan Edmiston Group documented a 76% decline in media and marketing deals.
Maybe Standard & Poor’s could provide some cheer? The corporate default rate climbed to 9.2% in June.
How about the economic picture? Forward Capital’s Richard Moody reports that unemployment rose to 9.5 percent. That’s not good.
What about this Rolling Stone link? More bad news.
To circle back to my original story, at the end of the seven second firework frenzy, everyone emerged unscathed. The dogs were shaken, the kids were crying and the wives were searching for the car keys in their pocketbooks, but nobody lost any digits. I didn’t get stay for the rest of the fireworks, which included a shiny 500 gram package, but I’m told that the house didn’t burn down. Just thought it was worth mentioning amid this onslaught of data.
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