What happened to animal spirits?
Mergers involving British firms are at record lows
MUCH has withered since the financial crisis of 2007, but little more so than the animal spirits of British companies. On June 3rd the Office for National Statistics, which tracks mergers and acquisitions worth at least £1m ($1.7m), revealed that there had been just 26 domestic mergers in the first quarter of 2014. This is the lowest quarterly figure since official statistics began in 1969. Nor are British firms very active abroad: there were also just 26 deals in the first quarter involving a British company taking control of a foreign one (see first chart). The long-run average is around 100.
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline "What happened to animal spirits?"
From the June 7th 2014 edition
Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents
Explore the editionMore from Britain
In English local elections Labour won where it needed to
And even in places where it did not
A growing number of Britons are on disability benefits
The government’s attempts to cut the welfare bill miss the bigger picture
British farmers shunned green schemes. Then the rain came
A rare Brexit dividend