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.

We recently released our latest quarterly Deal Flow Indicator (DFI), which shows further positive trends in the M&A deal market during Q3 2010. The DFI reports a continuing upward trend in deal activity since the first quarter of last year, with Q3 2010 deal activity up by 68% over the Q1 2009 low point. With the exception of the slow growth observed in Q1 of this year (two percent), deal activity has been steadily rising by an average 10% per quarter since Q1 2009.

Last month, we released the IntraLinks 2010 Q2 Deal Flow Indicator (DFI). The DFI is based on the volume of M&A deals IntraLinks was proposed for use on by deal teams over the course of the quarter. Given the high number of potential deals we’re pursuing at any one time as a leading virtual data room and M&A solution, the DFI offers a unique perspective on overall M&A market trends.

So what’s happening in the deal market? The DFI reports significant increases in the number of deals happening in Q2 2010, both vs. Q1 of this year, as well as over Q2 in 2009. While the DFI showed a mild uptick in Q1 2010 over Q4 2009, we saw a significant jump in March, a trend which continued into Q2.

Like many of those involved in the M&A market, I started the new decade thinking that things could only get better after recent economic challenges, and it appears that there are grounds for optimism.