Call off the candle-lit vigil; leveraged buy-outs are back. Private equity firm TPG, which this year said it had snubbed 140 LBO opportunities, has jumped back on the wagon to lead the year’s largest: the $5.2bn acquisition of IMS Health, a US healthcare research consulting firm. And as with last month’s $2.7bn acquisition of Anheuser-Busch InBev’s amusement unit by Blackstone, the private equity industry will take comfort in the return of banks’ willingness to lend on high-value transactions.

IMS’s shareholders, though, may have less cause to celebrate. They will receive $22 a share, a 50 per cent premium to the IMS share price before talk of a deal surfaced – but this is still a third less than the company’s 2007 peak. Meanwhile, its business prospects appear sound. Revenues have increased steadily through the downturn (though third-quarter figures slipped 6 per cent) and net debt is manageable at about 50 per cent of assets. Benefits should also accrue from the expanding global pharmaceuticals market, expected by IMS to grow at a compound rate of between 4 and 7 per cent to be about $1,000bn in 2013.