I recently attended the 2011 World Economic Forum on Latin America in Brazil. The theme of the conference focused on sustainable business growth in Latin America and creating long-term economic stability. Brazil has one of the fastest growing world economies, and at a time when global interest in the region is ramping up, what better place to discuss its future economic outlook? The country has attracted strong attention from the rest of the world, resulting in increasing cross-border deal flow. A recent article appeared in the Financial Times stating that the volume of mergers and acquisitions in 2010 reached nearly $153bn compared with almost $60bn a year earlier. Banks like JP Morgan and Citibank are also staffing up in the region to support increasing business.

As the economy begins to recover, European mergers and acquisitions (M&A) enjoy a busy start to the year, fueling forecasts of a bounce back in deal volume terms. To find out what the leading M&A professionals expect to be the predominant deal making trends of 2011, I attended the first IntraLinks and mergermarket breakfast event in the new series entitled ‘Securing Growth in 2011: The Changing Face of M&A’.

Held at London’s Andaz Hotel, in the heart of the City, it attracted over 80 attendees, who were keen to learn more about the M&A trends for 2011. The discussion was chaired by Catherine Ford, Managing Editor - Remark, The Mergermarket Group and the panel consisted of Martin Ashcroft, Managing Director, Brunner Mond Group; James Stewart, Partner, ECI Partners LLP; Stephen Wilkinson, Partner, Corporate, Herbert Smith LLP and Philip Whitchelo, VP Product Marketing - M&A, IntraLinks.

Those of you with about two decades in your career have witnessed and no doubt benefited from quantum changes in the speed of business information. From FedEx™ and fax machines to dial-up Internet and email to ubiquitous IM and handheld device video chat, information flows with increasing velocity in such a way that speed has become a competitive imperative for many firms. Similarly, from my corporate development days I remember my first transactions and making multiple flights across the Atlantic to physically sit in a data room to take notes from a bookcase of binders and boxes of files. The use of a Virtual Data Room (VDR) to support a deal was transformative – not just from the personal benefit of not traveling for diligence, but more importantly from the speed in which information can be reviewed, distributed to team members and analyzed in parallel fashion. The information now travels to the best possible resource regardless of location.

Relax.  Don’t freak out. Things in the M&A market are good.  In fact, they’re still very good.  We released our latest quarterly Deal Flow Indicator (DFI) and year end DFI results today.  Overall, 2010 was a big winner, showing a tremendous rebound from the doldrums of late 2008 and early 2009 that were brought on by the global financial crisis. The 2010 deal flow was up 33% from 2009. However, it’s unrealistic to expect that the numbers will continue to go up infinitely at every increment that you measure them. After six quarters of double digit sequential growth, the positive quarterly trends came to an end in Q4 2010. But it is a small correction, a mere three percent down in the M&A deal market that we observed in Q4 as an indicator heading into Q1 2011.

I recently read an interesting series of blogs about mergers on The Wall Street Journal. I found myself wholeheartedly agreeing with many of the points, particularly that each side involved in a merger wants to feel like they’ve received enough concessions from the other party and that this inevitably leads to all the lawyers involved in the process bringing lots of questions and issues to the table (and forcing them into the transaction agreements). It is only human nature after all for people to want to feel like they’ve accomplished as many wins as possible, no matter how minor they may be.

One issue that this series of blogs made me think about that wasn’t extensively covered by the author is all the due diligence that inevitably precedes these agreements. As many people know, the due diligence process has improved and continues to change, with the longstanding goal being to accelerate the overall deal process and helping to reduce the time it takes to finalize negotiations. That’s why we have seen significant growth in the last 10 years in the use of technology such as online datarooms/virtual dealrooms.