Every silver lining has a cloud. While we report today that levels of debt and equity issuance have never had a brighter start to a year, mergers and acquisitions activity in Europe has slumped by 26% so far in 2007 compared with the same period last year.
A brace of huge buyouts â the purchase of power group TXU Energy for a record $44.6bn by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Texas Pacific, and the $39bn buyout of Equity Office Properties Trust by Blackstone a few weeks earlier â has driven up US activity. But across the Atlantic the deals have been harder to come by.
