Last month we began our Lunch and Learn webcast series.  The idea behind these is to drive some education around the elements of our IntraLinks platform that people are less familiar with.  On April 7th I will be discussing how our Q&A functionality can make everyone’s life easier.  Last month we dove int

At the end of last month I flew to Düsseldorf to attend the first of this year’s IntraLinks sponsored mergermarket M&A, Private Equity and Restructuring forums. Attended by over 200 delegates from across Germany, the event provided a fine array of speakers from some of the leading firms specializing in M&A and Private Equity.

This year's JEGI 2010 Media & Technology Conference in New York City was quite a scene. With more than 200 C-level executives and M&A players from the banking, corporate, legal and private equity communities all searching for an inside look at what’s going on in the M&A market, it was the perfect place to unveil our quarterly Deal Flow Indicator tool (DFI) to this trend-hungry group. While there were solid speakers of every stripe, it was our unique and proprietary insight into what’s going on RIGHT NOW in the M&A world that really resonated with the crowd.

Because when it comes down to it, all the conjectures about market activity in the press, blogosphere and after-work watering holes are just that — conjecture. But IntraLinks dealroom activity reflects actual daily transaction flow around the world. In real time. As it happens.

Last Tuesday witnessed the IntraLinks sponsored Acquisitions Monthly Annual European M&A Awards held at the fabulous Hilton, Park Lane in London. Now in its twelfth year, the event, hosted by Thomson Reuters, was attended by many of the world's most senior, successful and respected M&A deal makers and celebrated the achievements of the M&A industry in riding out a difficult year.

With global M&A deal activity slipping down to 22% from 2008 levels (according to Dealogic) and some suggesting that we may have seen the bottom of the M&A market in 2009, I think it's safe to say that we’ll all be glad to say goodbye to 2009. And what better way to say farewell and to round the year off than with our Q4 Deal Flow Indicator results.