The Globe and Mail reports in its Saturday edition that global M&A activity in the third quarter totalled $993-billion, down 41 per cent compared with the prior quarter, marking the first quarter to fall below $1-trillion since the second quarter of 2025 (all figures U.S.). A Reuters dispatch to The Globe reports that surging energy costs have been fanning inflation and pushing expectations higher about where interest rates will settle. The benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury yield hit 5.34 per cent on Thursday, its highest level since 2002, after posting the biggest quarterly rise this century in the three months to September. Morgan Stanley's John Collins says: "At the margins [higher yields] makes valuations sometimes a little tougher. That said, the impact is hard to quantify, so I'm not ready to call a slowdown based on what we are seeing." This year worldwide M&A is up 28 per cent to $3.9-trillion, the highest level in since 2001, while the number of deals fell 8 per cent, levels not seen since 2020. Goldman Sachs' Carsten Woehrnco says, "Corporates are still looking for scale or access to markets and technologies they are not in." He sees total deal value exceeding the 2021 peak if the pace continues.