Are Mergers Back? Well, Sort Of

While this August has seen an unexpected resurgence in deals — huge deals — the banking business still hasn’t made up its mind where the trend is going, The New York Times’s Andrew Ross Sorkin writes in his latest DealBook column.
There are plenty of reasons to think that this boom can’t be sustained without a matching lift in consumer spending, but still, people are working through the night in Manhattan, their hands trembling as they tweak their final calculations over an 11th can of Red Bull.
What’s behind it? Companies chasing synergies, or locking in natural resources, or using up spare cash, Mr. Sorkin writes. But more importantly: how long can it last?
Read the column here.