Green shoot rating 3 out of 5 Mergers and acquisitions have been all but non-existent since the credit crunch took hold, but figures from the Zephyr database, which tracks such activity, shows the value of deals in the first three months of this year up 40% on 2008 levels to £214bn.
In recent years, a variety of challenges and opportunities have been thrown at the NFP sector, from public service delivery to mergers and the need to diversify income.
The mergers happened, but the dumbing down did not.
The data sought was on the order of a "mergers and acquisitions analysis", the sort of due diligence that another firm interested in buying Fatima might conduct, including "an abundant amount of financial and investor data that would illuminate with whom Fatima interacted".
Diana Allen, chief of the US National Park Service's "Healthy Parks, Healthy People" initiative, is seeing mergers of medical schools and parks programs.
Oil bosses saw the opportunity of mergers that would enable them both to cut costs through removing jobs and offices and increase their oil reserves without the need for costly exploratory drilling.
The results informed inspections, school closures and mergers, and school and departmental improvement approaches.
Related: BG and Shell could be just the first of many energy mergers This time round it has been booming US shale production, faltering demand from China and other emerging economies, and Opec's reluctance to cut production that have sent the oil price down by half since the peak of $110 a barrel last summer.
The last round of intense mergers, when Chevron moved on Texaco, Conoco on Phillips and Exxon on Mobil, was triggered by a similar collapse in oil prices at the end of the millennium.
