Many of us have learnt in the past 12 months that there’s nothing like a crisis to make you follow through on long-held plans. And so it is for corporate Australia, where a post-pandemic surge in dealmaking has finally brought acquisitions to fruition after years of gestation.

Cleanaway’s acquisition of a parcel of assets from French waste giant Suez is a good example; while Cleanaway’s attempt to buy all of Suez’s Australian assets was scuppered by a separate takeover battle, the Sydney assets it has secured were a target for the best part of a decade.