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Vince Garozzo, a St. Louis mergers-and-acquisition lawyer, made a prediction in an interview early last year: If dark economic clouds continued to form, private equity funds and other financial buyers would exit the M&A market, and only strategic buyers — companies adding to their core businesses — would remain.

The Fortune Group, an investment banking firm, tracks sales of St. Louis companies and counted 14 in the first quarter, compared with 28 in the first quarter last year. "There weren't many transactions that started in the fourth quarter of 2008, so not many closed in the first quarter of 2009," John Hull, a Fortune director, said. Among small businesses, BizBuySell, an online business broker, reported 1,146 deals in the U.S. in the first quarter, down more than a third compared with the first quarter last year. Median sale price for those deals was $165,500 in the first quarter, compared with $200,000 a year ago.