As we closed out 2009 and slid into 2010, a number of pundits, including many agency-brokerage executives and investment bankers-consultants, suggested 2010 would be an over-the-top, banner year for M&A activity. A few contrarians, myself included, suggested M&A activity would not roar back like gangbusters, but rather would take some time for the fundamentals to improve and momentum to return.

Read Tim Cunningham's previous Sounding Board: Beware the ides of the market.”

What, then, is the current landscape? Announced deals are a reasonable indicator of total M&A activity, although these only represent a minority of all transactions. Announced deals in 2009 (173 transactions) were down 40 percent from 289 such deals in 2008. Further, 2009 had the least activity since 2000. But events suggest that 2010 will not be the banner year and that we may actually see less activity than in 2009: note just 73 announced deals through June 30, 2010, compared with 89 deals through June 30, 2009.