Revista-E

London (July 28, 2009)–Nearly half (48 percent) of all UK corporate M&A professionals surveyed by IntraLinks and mergermarket predict economic recovery in Europe by the middle of 2010. Forty-six percent of respondents were confident they would conduct M&A transactions in the coming year.

The study also revealed a number of insights on today’s European M&A market, including:

· Distressed M&A and corporate restructuring predicted to increase. Nearly all respondents (94 percent) expect distressed-driven M&A transactions to increase (82 percent) or increase greatly (12 percent) in Europe. In addition, 96 percent of those surveyed thought the number of corporate restructurings to increase (73 percent) or increase greatly (23 percent).

· Financial services sector expected to have the most M&A transactions. Almost half of those surveyed (48 percent) expect the financial services sector to witness the greatest level of M&A activity over the next 12 months.

· UK to engage in more restructuring engagements than rest of Europe. The majority (84 percent) of respondents say the UK is two times more likely than any other European region to experience the most restructurings in the year ahead.

“Despite past market volatility, this survey suggests room for optimism for the next year. With M&A activity likely to increase, the savviest investors will be those who are able to make key decisions quickly and execute efficiently,” said Andrew Pearson, Managing Director EMEA for IntraLinks. In fact, more than two thirds (68 percent) of our survey respondents believe that an online dataroom significantly expedites the due diligence process, and even more (71 percent) say that taking the process online allows them focus on strategic rather than tactical decisions more quickly.”