There was a rush of acquisition activity in fund management last month, sparking talk of another round of consolidation. If this comes about, M&A bankers will raise a huge cheer.
They will be hoping this run of deals is the start: if not of an avalanche, then at least a small landslide. Hard times in fund management, with dead markets forcing parents to consider selling off investment houses, could mean bonus time again for the M&A piranhas.
In the UK, Threadneedle has been bought by American Express from Zurich Financial Services, while US Trust, the high-net-worth subsidiary of Charles Schwab, is taking over State Street's private asset management business and Lehman Brothers is widely tipped to take over Neuberger Berman at any moment.
It is hard to draw like-for-like comparisons between these three deals: the sums being paid for them are wildly different, but so is the nature of the three acquisition targets.
The normal benchmark used to assess the worth of a fund management deal is the price paid as a percentage of assets under management. Of these three, American Express seems to be striking the best bargain: forking out $570 million, less than 1% of Threadneedle's $75 billion in assets under management.