Let's make a deal

I spent three days last week at ZweigWhite's 2009 Mergers & Acquisitions Summit, meeting some of the industry's top wheelers and dealers and hearing about some of their successes and even some of their failures, a rare treat for journalists-- and for potential first-time buyers or sellers, I'd imagine. We'll have plenty of coverage of the Summit in the December issue of AEC Finance News, but my overall impression of the event after attending for the second year in a row is there was much more conversation among those who were there than last year, when interaction was at a minimum in the early days of the economic meltdown. I'm not saying there will be more deals in the next 12 months than there were this year, but it was good to see more firm leaders thinking about buying rather than selling.