Like the many competitors at the recently wrapped Calgary Stampede, the M&A market in Q2 dusted itself off and showed its resilience.

With continued strength in the middle market, an increase in distressed M&A and an uptick in go-private transactions, the first half of 2023 played out in many ways as we expected when we published our Look Ahead to 2023 in early January. A few things we did not anticipate included the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and the explosion of renewed interest in artificial intelligence (AI) following the release of ChatGPT, both of which have had ripple effects that have impacted M&A activity in Canada and globally.