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From the Opalesque team:

US-based M&A activity is expected to pick up in 2010, and industry experts are looking to the financial and tech industries to provide a bulk of the action. "There will be movement and legislation to break [the biggest financials] up," said Steve Gerbel, Founder and CEO of Chicago Capital Management during a meeting on Tuesday.

The eventual breakup of these behemoth firms (Bank of America and Citigroup are two Gerbel mentioned as currently falling into the "too big to fail" group) will make for a more competitive banking landscape. Gerber expects the number of failures in small banks to gradually slow throughout 2010. Instead the rate of small bank acquisitions will rise and Gerbel expects a number of the "super-regionals" to merge, answering the call to compete with bigger banks that will have been reduced in size.

Gerbel's optimistic outlook was echoed later in the day with the publication of survey results that showed 82% of the financial industry dealmakers believe M&A activity will increase over the next 6 months. The current survey reflects a sharp increase from the July responses that indicated 56% expected M&A activity would increase during the first half of 2010 (Source: The Association for Corporate Growth (ACG) and Thomson Reuters).

In addition to financials, Gerbel expects that M&A activity will increase across technology, as new product......................

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