2008 was the year defined more by the deals that did not go through in the media/information sector. The dollar volume of deals that failed, including Informa ($6.7 billion), Reed Business Information ($1.0 billion), and Cygnus Business Media ($200 million), among others, dwarfed the $2.0 billion dollar volume of the deals that went through, according to a year-end note by i-bankers DeSilva & Phillips (disclosure: one of our sponsors). On the consumer side, I would add the big MSFT-YHOO non-deal to it; also the Entrepreneur Media deal, valued at around $175 million (and being repped by DeSilva themselves) that didn’t go through.

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Also, even though the year’s total deal count was down by 20 percent from 2007, annual stats make it look relatively rosy: Q4, which usually represents at least 25 percent of annual media deals, saw only 18 deals announced – 16.7 percent of the year’s total volume. Another observation worth noting: In 2007, consumer media dominated the deal market, representing two-thirds of the top fifteen deals and over 72 percent of the dollar volume. In 2008, the balance between consumer and B2B deals reverted to the century’s norm: B2B deals represented 53 percent of the year’s deals. You can see the full report here.

For more on the deals sector, check out or Mergers & Acquisitions channel