Slow year ahead for corporate takeovers

Forced sales demanded by creditors and government-brokered transactions may provide the only consolation for bankers in what promises to be the slowest year for mergers and acquisitions since 2004.

Bankers at Barclays Capital and Nomura Holdings Inc say the value of deals may decline 30 percent in 2009 to about $2 trillion. Takeovers so far this year are down 36 percent from the same period in 2007, reducing the fees paid to banks by 34 percent to an estimated $63 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg and New York-based research firm Freeman & Co.

"These are the worst conditions for many years, as bad as or worse than the early 1990s, perhaps as bad as the mid-1970s," said Philip Keevil, 62, senior partner in London at Compass Advisers LLP and former head of European mergers at Salomon Smith Barney Inc. "There will be a flood of strategic deals in the new year out of necessity, including government-forced mergers among banks and insurance companies."