Buzzing with traffic just a year ago, the mergers and acquisitions superhighway is closed for repairs, but some vehicles are still getting through on smaller side streets. The change is dramatic. Brisk activity through the summer of 2008 “came to a screeching halt” in September when funding froze, notes Kurt Strawhecker, managing partner of The Strawhecker Group (TSG), Omaha, Nebraska. “There is some anecdotal evidence that credit is beginning to flow again and some transactions are going through.”

It’s a buyer’s market, says Omid Tofigh, a principal and head of the mergers and acquisitions practice at First Annapolis Consulting in Linthicum, Maryland. “The deals are taking longer; there are fewer bidders for properties that come on the market, and the properties are selling at lower prices than they would have a year or two ago,” he says.

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