The 10 per cent gain in the ASX 200 this year doesn’t nearly capture the drama that corporate Australia has endured in 2021.

While the year brought a record-breaking boom in mergers and acquisitions and a stunning recovery in earnings, it also brought the most difficult phase of the pandemic, characterised by extended lockdowns of the nation’s two most important cities, worsening supply chain crises, and a skills shortage that will last well into the new year.