Credit Woes Dampen Deal Makers’ Spirits

Investment bankers, a notoriously overconfident lot, are starting to get a little insecure.
Of the more than 1,000 bankers, lawyers, private-equity executives and corporate deal making types surveyed by the Association for Corporate Growth and Thomson Financial, a full 68% believe the credit markets that have fueled the M&A boom will be worse a year from now. On a separate but related question, the biggest group (37%) listed higher interest rates as the biggest challenge to continued growth in merger activity.