Frozen finance puts skids on European M&A

M&A dealmakers in Europe are staring at empty pipelines, bereft of the balance sheet firepower needed to finance acquisitions. Gun-shy companies are anyway in no mood to resume big-ticket dealmaking. The combination means an impasse for new deals, writes David Rothnie, and while the bond markets are helping out, they are no substitute for the traditional model of banks providing syndicated loans to clients to finance acquisitions.