It depends what source you go to for statistics, and there are plenty to chose from, but it does   
look as if the UK M&A market is slowly turning up.   Merger Market reported a 64% upturn in deal values to £23Bn comparing Q1 2010 with Q1 2011.    That said volumes were up a meagre 3% so the upturn in their figures was all about a few large deals.  

On a more positive note most businses sectors have seem some upturn.  There has also been lots of cross border technology sector activity - mostly focussed on smaller strateic deals.   The East Anglian picture is similar with big deals - such as CSR's acquisition of Zoran Corp for £420M skewing the figures.

The Merger Market stats were drawn up to 31 March.  However over at CorpFin which has some more recent figures  they were reporting a downturn in April - blaming David Cameron and the Royal Family formerly known as the house of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.   Well what they actually said was that the unusual number of bank holidays slowed things up - the extra's holidays being down to DC granting an extra one for that wedding.   And it did feel like August come early.   It will be interesting to see if May shows a compensating uplift once figures are available. 

Nuclear flash over Grafham water after sailing one evening recently. Actually no just the camera on my phone failing to cope with the exposure.