Journalists do not, as a rule, like good news. Many are now indulging their innate nostalgie de la boue, a "yearning for the mire," in this case economic. The severity of the global financial crisis is difficult for anyone, however sunny their disposition, to deny. But the media, and a U.K. government reinvigorated by its latest star turn as a crisis manager, neglect to remind the public that ordinary life can continue even in the most extraordinary places. A London banker returned from Zimbabwe, a country racked by hyperinflation, food shortages, rampant crime and collapsed infrastructure, reports having seen small pockets of normality amid the chaos.

The financial centers of Europe are hardly in the same league as the Zimbabwean capital of Harare, despite the best efforts of the Cassandras, but much more convincing scenes of normal, and surprisingly healthy, economic activity exist. They will proliferate as the financial system stabilizes. The M&A world has not imploded, as advisers can well attest. Thomson Financial data shows that between Sept. 15 and Oct. 28 there were some 1,250 M&A deals announced in Europe with a total value of nearly $261 billion -- almost double the value in the same period last year and even more than in the same period in 2006.

Of course, some of the largest transactions were the well-publicized bank rescues, but more than a few were significant deals that cannot be described as distressed.

Among them was the acquisition by Depository Trust & Clearing Corp., the largest U.S. securities clearing-house, of LCH.Clearnet Group Ltd. of London for $951 million. Arguably more significant for the wider markets, however, is another financial services deal. Porterbrook Leasing Co. Ltd. in the U.K., the train leasing unit of Abbey National plc and part of the resurgent Banco Santander SA, will be sold for around $3 billion in what could well be Europe's largest buyout this year. Porterbrook said the acquirers were a consortium of three funds owned by BNP Paribas SA of France, Lloyds TSB Group plc of the U.K. and Germany's Deutsche Bank AG. All the indications are that the deal will be mostly funded with debt, some of which Lloyds TSB confirmed it would be providing.

Smaller buyouts, reassuringly pedestrian, continued to appear in October. London-based private equity firm Duke Street Capital acquired the French medical diagnostics company Biomnis for €213 million ($272 million). U.K. midmarket private equity firm Dunedin Capital Partners Ltd. backed the £23.5 million ($37.8 million) buyout of Rathbone Trust International from Rathbone Brothers plc, while GMT Communications Partners LLP and Peacock Equity completed the €70 million majority buyout of German online games provider Bigpoint GmbH. London-based emerging-markets specialist Actis Capital LLP joined Warburg Pincus in making a $65 million investment in the budget hotel operator 7 Days Inn Group.

These deals are less eye-catching for thrill seekers than the prospect of a depression, perhaps, but collectively they make an important statement. They show that the momentum behind certain kinds of nondistressed M&A and private equity dealmaking is potent enough to withstand the gales of a global financial crisis and the reasonable fears of worldwide recession.

This is hardly a golden age for investment banking, but it is by no means a terrible time to be in the pure advisory business. Firms such as Lazard, Moelis & Co. and Rothschild are taking selected opportunities to recruit experienced bankers, no doubt on favorable terms for the employers.

Rothschild has hired Antonio Villalon, a former vice chairman of investment banking at Lehman Brothers Inc. in Europe, as co-head of its European financial institutions group, along with two other ex-Lehman bankers. Moelis recruited Andrew Thompson from Morgan Stanley's London office. Lazard named Alexis de Rosnay, the former Lehman co-head of investment banking for Europe and the Middle East, as vice chairman of Lazard International.

Instead of wallowing in the mire, many bankers are putting one foot in front of the other, going to work and hoping for the best.