We asked 130 lenders, attorneys, investors and investment bankers when they believe middle market M&A activity will pick up again. There is a growing consensus among professionals that deal activity levels are on the upswing. In this edition of Viewpoint, we summarize the survey’s key takeaways regarding how today’s changing economic conditions, investor confidence levels and deal financing environment will impact future M&A activity levels...

There is a logical explanation for why credit markets are tight and will remain so for the rest of 2009 and into 2010. Banks (and many non-bank lenders) remain overleveraged, and are being forced by regulators and market forces to de-leverage by raising capital and reducing the overall size of their balance sheets...

Business leaders are often too slow to recognize a trend, and therefore too slow to make the critical changes necessary to avoid operating losses...

Like virtually every other sector of the worldwide economy, the transaction sector has been impacted significantly by the current financial crisis. Frozen credit markets, declining corporate profits and overleveraged borrowers are converging to make 2009 one of the more challenging deal environments in memory. November 2008 saw the lowest number of transactions close since September 2001, and the trend has been downhill from there...

Welcome back to 1997. Tiger Woods won his first green jacket at the Masters at age 21, Steve Jobs returned to the corner office at Apple, and the Dow Jones industrial average closed above 7,000 for the first time...