Investment banks have been reporting that there has been very little activity in the mergers and acquisitions market this year, but one business banker is telling a different story. Commonwealth Bank's executive general manager for corporate financial services, Symon Brewis-Weston, says his acquisition finance team has been handling an increasing deal flow.Brewis-Weston's customers are private companies with a turnover of up to A$500 million a year. His team handles M&A deals worth up to around $250 million, with an average size of $80 million.He says EBITDA (earnings before tax, depreciation and amortisation) multiples in takeovers have fallen in his segment of the market, just as they have at the big end of town. Before the financial crisis businesses were being sold on multiples of four to six times EBITDA; now they sell for two to 2.5 times.Brewis-Weston said: "For a couple of years after the GFC people held off selling their business. They had an idea of what the business was worth and they thought that if they waited the market would come back to that level. It hasn't."People are being more realistic now. If it is a private company the owner makes the call. In the institutional M&A market it is not such a straightforward process."He said demographics were also playing a part in getting the market moving. The average age of his division's clients is 55 and most of them are thinking about exit plans, succession strategies and so on."You might own a business turning over $100 million a year but crystallising that wealth is the biggest problem many of our clients face," Brewis-Weston said.Private equity funds are active in this part of the market. They have been the buyers in 55 per cent of the deals that CBA's acquisition finance team has been involved in.These deals include the acquisition of the Melbourne aviation training company, Ansett Aviation Training, by CHAMP Ventures, as well as the acquisition of the Cairns marine logistics company, Sea Swift, by CHAMP.Brewis-Weston has run a dedicated acquisition finance team for three years. It does not advise clients, although this is an opportunity Brewis-Weston looks at from time to time. "We may get into it, but our primary role is funding. Multiple roles can cloud the client relationship."Where the team can add value is by tapping the bank's institutional broking business to arrange an initial public offering or other equity capital markets solutions.Brewis-Weston said there has been a lot of activity in transport, mining services, regional aviation, logistics and fuel distribution, food and food services. The typical funding arrangement involves an aggressive pay-down over the first couple of years and then a transition to a standard facility.The acquisition finance team has completed somewhere between 15 and 20 deals, and is now contributing around five per cent of the division's earnings.