In just over a week, 2008 will be the year that was. But for legions of jilted dealmakers, it’s already proving to be the year that wasn’t.

Along with busted banks and punctured Ponzi schemes, more would-be mergers and acquisitions ended up in the bonfire of financial meltdown than at any time in Wall Street memory. The combination of market volatility and frozen credit gave even the steeliest of suitors pause for thought.

If M&A activity mark were classified like a French wine, then the 2008 vintage would be heavy on the dregs.

According to Dealogic, a financial data provider, 1,309 companies got within shouting distance of the altar in 2008 – only to call things off and go the way of the runaway bride. Compare that with the previous year, when companies walked away from 870 deals.

Dealmaking volumes plunged some 30% this year from 2007. The total value of deals that were never consummated as a result of market turmoil – the lost opportunities – was overs $900 billion.

Amiong the biggest deals-that-could-have-been-but-weren’t in 2008 was the largest merger in history, BHP Billiton's hostile feint for mining rival Rio Tinto. A marriage would have been valued at $147.8 billion. Second on the near-miss M&A list, a thwarted telecom tie-up between two Canadian firms – BCE and Telus.

And then there’s the Mother of All On-Again-Off-Again Technology deals – Yahoo's elusive courtship of Microsoft. That M&A minuet seems to be an ongoing affair – and even now, a deal can’t be entirely ruled out.

Less dealmaking means fewer fees for M&A advisers in 2008. They saw their total take drop by 30%, to around 34.2 billion dollars, according to Thomson Reuters.

But they were hardly paupers. Goldman Sachs led the advisers' list with 1.6 billion dollars in fees, followed by JP Morgan with $1.3 billion and Switzerland's UBS, at $1.1 billion.

Nor were all M&A sectors hit. Deals involving so-called distressed companies are seen as a robust market. That includes firms that need to dump assets or merge with rivals in order to patch up gaping holes in their balance sheets.

And even if all-cash transactions took a beating, all-stock deals were more in favor, since all they required were share swaps.

Where a deal was made was also an important factor in its potential success. China and Brazil bucked the slide in M&A activity. Brazil witnessed a more than 90% surge in activity. Other countries with plump cash reserves, such as Japan, also stood to gain from the straitened circumstances of foreign buyout targets.

Hostile bids were also popular.  US companies, according to Reuters, had more unsolicited approaches this year than at any point since 1999 – including InBev's $60 billion buy-out of US brewer Anheuser-Busch.

But even in recessionary times, M&A activity remains a multi-trillion-dollar global business. Not even a darkening outlook for 2009 will be enough to deter the most determined dealmakers.