With $42.9 billion worth of transactions announced this year, the industry has experienced a drop of only 18 percent, according to Thomson Reuters.
That's the lowest volume of summertime deals since the financial markets began trembling in the summer of 2007, surpassing only the $149 billion worth of transactions announced in 2009.
From next Friday we'll start seeing the practical results of the £18bn worth of cuts announced in the emergency budget and comprehensive spending review.
The first half of 2013 was the slowest first six months for mergers in four years, with about $996.8 billion worth of deals announced in the period, down 13 percent from the period a year earlier, according to data from Thomson Reuters.
Handy & Harman, the precious-metals company that has been rocked by the arrests of senior executives and the loss of millions of dollars worth of gold, announced yesterday that it planned to close its South Windsor, Conn., plant by mid-April.
$72bn worth of orders announced at the last show in 2012.
Dealogic says M&A volume is at a new record, with $1.65 trillion worth of deals announced year-to-date.
There has been $132 billion worth of mergers announced in January, according to Dealogic, some $17.7 billion of it from financial sponsors buying out public companies and taking them private.
