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By Tom Granahan

Granahan: PE's Power Play

June 8, 2009 - Growth is better than contraction, but is the recent PE overhang data reason for celebration?

Granahan: 'Mid'dling Market

June 1, 2009 - An improving stock market and a bounce in follow-on offerings bode well for M&A. It just hasn't happened yet.

Distressed Lending

May 19, 2009 - Investment Dealers' Digest's Tom Granahan takes issue with lenders who apparently lost their will to fight.

The More Things Change ...

April 6, 2009 - One really neat thing about leading a publication that’s been around for three-quarters of a century is that, with just a trip down the hall to the dusty, bound copies of Investment Dealers Digest, you can find out what was going on in the dealer community in the midst of the Great Depression.

Golf Anyone?

March 2, 2009 - In a week that saw the US citizenry declare that it's got more love for
 Barack Obama than Jesus Christ himself (or herself), an even more
 remarkable event took place: John Kerry and his buddies dragged DC, and
 our recovery efforts, even lower.



One Day Something Will Work




January 26, 2009 - I’ll preface this note by saying it's mostly about Libor. Even so, you
 might find it interesting.



A New (Pay) Day Is Dawning

December 22, 2008 - In what's being dubbed in some circles as a 'remarkable' move, Morgan Stanley said recently it was instituting a bonus policy that will essentially hold back a piece of an employees' bonus for three years, pending proof the individual didn't engage in conduct detrimental to the firm. It's called a 'clawback.'

One More Try

November 17, 2008 - I just might be starting to buy into all of this depression talk. Not Depression, of course—with apologies to George Soros and John Whitehead, that's still ludicrous—just plain depression. It's hard enough when your job has you knee-deep in the muck every day, and when the Dow has a '7' handle, and when your friends want to talk markets first, sports second. But then piled on top is that, after having convinced enough people that his original idea was a good one (the only one?), the guy steering the bailout ship, and one of the few public faces of crisis-solution in which some of us had any faith, essentially says it's time to start over.

Net Effect

October 27, 2008 - Earnings.

Main Street Should Share Blame

September 29, 2008 - Dial this up as yet another facet of the financial crisis I just don't understand: Why are 'the taxpayers' the victims in this debacle?

Lies, Damned Lies And … The Middle Market

July 28, 2008 - I'm not always on board with its commentary, but The Economist had a good story the other day about how misleading statistics can be. No, that's not exactly breaking news, but the magazine offered a clever lead and also had me thinking about the middle-market dealmaking arena. 'Hedge funds had a brilliant first half of 2008, outperforming Wall Street by 12 percentage points,' the magazine wrote. 'Hedge funds had an awful six months, producing their…

Life Goes On

June 30, 2008 - By now, you’ve seen the numbers that marked the carnage that was the first half in M&A. Crazy stuff, such as private equity volume off by 85% in the US, and not much less than that around the world. Or total M&A being down 35% in the first six months of the year versus the same timeframe last year.

Measured Success

May 27, 2008 - When people say that “out of tragedy something good always comes,” you just know they’re thinking about the Test & Measurement industry.

Women Are From Venus, M&A Is From Mars

April 29, 2008 - One deal does not make a trend, of course, but Monday’s announcement that Mars and Berkshire Hathaway were teaming up to buy gum-maker Wrigley had to tickle the taste buds of a comatose buyout crowd desperate for signs of life.

Bear News Wreaks More Havoc on Market

March 19, 2008 - Well, we’ve learned in the past few days, in gory detail, precisely why some of us have been so very worried about the stranglehold within the credit markets. It was never just about a run-of-the-mill slowdown in the economy, or a meaningless debate about whether we were or were not officially in a recession.

I Hate You ... Call Me

April 15, 2008 - If reports are true that the board of Yahoo! wants another $12 billion or so from Microsoft to consider a deal, maybe you have to wonder exactly how bad the M&A market really is.