M&A pickup expected now dividends growth is more entrenched

Thames River's Rob Burdett argues that company balance sheets should be healthy enough to see us through the global storm.

The returns from equity markets for Q2 2011 were largely flat to down a little overall, however this masks volatility once again, which now appears to be a recurring theme over recent quarters. The March earthquake and associated issues in Japan have continued to hit sentiment. Markets did start to look through this impact in the early part of the quarter, only for the Greek debt crisis to resurface, accompanied by civil unrest. The Middle East has been relatively subdued of late, but there are issues that still need to be resolved here. Economic data started to roll over a litt...