companies world-wide are getting ready for more mergers and acquisitions next year. early stage merger activity was up 7% in the third quarter of 2016, a figure that bodes well for deal announcements in the first quarter of 2017, according to intralinks holdings inc., which provides cloud-based services that let companies share sensitive information. the new york-based company bases its calculation on the number of virtual data rooms that are opened by prospective corporate sellers. they and potential buyers use such data rooms for sharing due-diligence documents and other deal-related information. intralinks said it uses the early-stage activity to forecast deal announcements, which typically take place six months afterward<u+2014>or, in this case, early 2017. the increase in activity may have been influenced by the outlook for u.s. elections as well as good economic news. <u+201c>most dealmakers didn<u+2019>t anticipate a [hillary] clinton loss, but regardless, some positive economic data also helped drive m&a activity and mitigate the effect of political uncertainty,<u+201d> said matt porzio, vice president of strategy for specialized financial services at intralinks. aside from latin america, all global regions experienced upticks in early-stage merger activity in the third quarter, including north america, where activity rose 5% year over year. <u+201c>north america is looking strong across sectors, aside from health care and minor blips in industrials and [technology, media, and telecommunications],<u+201d> mr.<u+00a0> porzio said. the u.k. vote to exit the european union didn<u+2019>t seem to have much of an impact on early-stage merger activity in that country, which rose 8%. nor did it damp down such activity in europe, the middle east, and africa, where it increased 13%. <u+201c>when we looked into [the] deal pipeline immediately after brexit, the impact looked immaterial,<u+201d> mr. porzio said. <u+2014>richard teitelbaum
the big number     - wsj
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