$2.7 billion was spent to acquire 120 Net-related companies

is the market in an upswing or hunker-down?

[Tapolyai]

Recent article in "NewsBytes" regarding mergers and Acquisitions.

[newsbytes.com...]

Two interesting quotes:

'The surge in mergers and acquisitions indicates the “rehabilitation” of certain business models'

'Last week Webmergers reported that the number of dot-com failures declined for the fifth consecutive month.'

[cyril kearney]

I think a more telling number is that over 500,000 jobs have been lost to the IT sector in 2001. Dice.com a job search site said that they are seeing about 30,000 job listing in a month which was down from agout 100,000 a month in 2000 and before.

A consulting association is saying that 15% of its members have been looking for assignments (unemployed) for over two months. In the New York City area consulting billing rates have dropped to late-1980's levels.

M&A's may be the rehabilitaion of business models or just the bigger fish consuming the smaller ones at bargain prices.