Three months after the global stock market crash, companies are back to striking merger and acquisition (M&A) deals, but private equity (PE) firms have clearly retreated into a shell. The data for May shows that while M&A volumes have pretty much clawed back to the monthly average for 2007, PE deals shrank to a 3-year low in May after hitting an all-time high of 60 transactions in January this year. There were a total of 48 M&As, with an average ticket size of $51 million, which were strategic in nature involving Indian firms either as an acquirer or the target as per the latest dealtracker by advisory firm Grant Thornton. This included 25 cross border deals, of which 17 were outbound worth $1.58 billion and 8 were inbound deals adding up to $630 million, besides 23 domestic deals with an announced value of $240 million. While there was no frenetic activity for strategic M&As, the month of May recorded the second-highest deal volume during the past five months, marginally below the 56 deals announced in January. The total number of M&A deals during the first five months of 2008 stands at 214 with an announced value of $13.19 billion.   more »