If M&A were a sport it would be more like baseball than basketball.
Sports tend to score in two different ways - incremental and explosive. In basketball you win slowly, building and extending a lead over time and grinding the opposing team into submission.
Each individual point matters, but barring shots in the dying seconds of a very close game, few single baskets turn out to be defining moments in a contest. Most racquet and ball sports tend to fall into this accumulative category.
Meanwhile in explosive sports nothing much happens, or more accurately, many things almost happen and the tension builds until something monumentally decisive occurs.
A football goal is scored and fans are sent into simultaneous rapture or despair depending on which team they are supporting. Each score is a significant blow and is remembered.
Baseball is like this.
Last week I was lucky enough to be invited to watch the New York Yankees host the Boston Red Sox. It was my first live ball game and the atmosphere of this contest, steeped in history and East Coast rivalry, was electric.
But for seven innings nothing much happened - I had time to drink some beer and even go for a great steak dinner with my host inside the stadium.
Then in the eighth innings the Red Sox exploded - scoring three runs in a flash. Hitherto subdued and invisible Bostonians were suddenly everywhere, cheering and whooping.
The Yankees struck out in response and it looked like their season was dead and buried.
Then in the bottom of the ninth and final innings something rare and wonderful happened.
The bases were loaded and a Yankees hitter got walked by the pitcher, the score at 3-1. Then a guy called Mark Teixeira walked up to the plate. He swung and smashed a home run. Four runs to the Yankees - a grand slam - and the game was over.
It doesn't get any more explosive than that - turning a 3-1 deficit into a 5-3 victory with one hit, which then turns out to be the last of the game. In baseball they call this a "walk-off".
In Teixeira's case it was also almost the last hit of his career, as he was set to retire that very weekend. He walked off the park to the adulation of 65,000 suddenly rejuvenated Yankees fans.
Back in our world of global (re)insurance M&A not much had happened in 2016.
Then suddenly the home runs started peppering the crowd, as Ascot, Asia Capital Re, Ariel and Endurance exploded onto our front page and into your inbox.
But I have a confession to make. I blew it. I wasn't there to witness a sight that has only happened 29 times in Major League Baseball history. I had to read about it in the paper the next day.
Naturally I blame my Yankee-fan host, whose now secret identity is forever safe with me, lest he be forever barred from the Bronx.
But at the bottom of the eighth all hope seemed lost and we got the subway home early to miss the crowds. So instead of witnessing a little bit of sporting history I was riding the number four train downtown somewhere around the Upper East Side.
Remember M&A is an explosive and lumpy game.
Just because the scoreline reads 0-0 it doesn't mean that nothing is happening. Don't take a rain check and don't bet against more big swings and big hits before the year is out.
Click here to read our special edition for the EAIC conference 2016.
Mark Geoghegan,
Managing Director
Euromoney Insurance Group