We expect J Geils Band that a significant amount of M&Aactivity

We expect probes J Geils Band that a j. giles band devises significant amount of M&Aactivity in the immediate term will be of a defensive or opportunisticnature," said Peter Hatges of KPMG Corporate Finance."We expect companies to seek out merger partners in order to strengthenbalance sheets and realize cost savings and other synergies. Theobjectives may be different, but the name of the game has not changed.Like every other cycle, a strong period of expansion is followed byrationalization and consolidation.Canadian companies kept up a reasonable pace of foreign acquisitions with416 foreign takeovers valued at US$29.9 billion. The number of foreigntakeovers of Canadian companies amounted to 440 deals for a value of $37billion, representing 28 percent of total Canadian M&A deal value. Thebulk of the M&A activity continues to be Canadian companies buying otherCanadian companies, including Canada's largest deal of the year: TeckCominco's acquisition of Fording Coal valued at US$13.6 billion. TDBank's acquisition of Commerce Bancorp of New Jersey was the secondlargest Canadian M&A deal valued at US$8.6 billion. Canadian companieswere the acquirers in 6 of the top 10 deals this year.

The top 10Canadian M&A deals are summarized below.--------------------------------------------------------------------------Target NameTarget AcquirerAcquirerValue Nation NameNation of Trans- action($mil)--------------------------------------------------------------------------Fording Canadian Coal TrustCanada Teck ComincoCanada 13,599 Ltd--------------------------------------------------------------------------Commerce Bancorp, NewUnited StatesToronto-Canada8,638 JerseyDominion Bank--------------------------------------------------------------------------Duvernay Oil CorpCanada Shell CanadaCanada5,454 Ltd--------------------------------------------------------------------------Cognos Inc Canada IBM CorpUnited4,964 States--------------------------------------------------------------------------IPSCO Inc-Canadian Tubular Canada Evraz Group Russian 4,025 OpSAFed--------------------------------------------------------------------------PrimeWest Energy Trust Canada TAQAUtd 3,964 Arab Em--------------------------------------------------------------------------Canetic Resources TrustCanada Penn West Canada3,816 Energy Trust--------------------------------------------------------------------------National Grid PLC-Ravenswood United StatesTransCanada Canada2,800 Corp--------------------------------------------------------------------------UAP Holding Corp United StatesAgrium IncCanada2,624--------------------------------------------------------------------------RBTT Financial Holdings LtdTrinidad & Tob Royal BankCanada2,235 of Canada--------------------------------------------------------------------------About KPMGKPMG LLP, a Canadian limited liability partnership established under thelaws of Ontario, is the Canadian member firm affiliated with KPMGInternational, a global network of professional firms providing Audit,Tax, and Advisory services the j geils band . Member firms operate in 145 countries andhave more than 123,000 professionals working around the world.The independent member firms of the KPMG network are affiliated with KPMGInternational, a Swiss cooperative geils band . Each KPMG firm is a legally distinctand separate entity, and describes itself as such.Contacts:KPMGJulie BannerjeaSenior Manager, Media Relations(416) 777-3243Email: PMGShilpa KotechaManager, Media Relations(416) 777-8918Copyright 2009, Market Wire, All rights reserved.-0- blow your face out . Global Expansion, Significant Partner and Product Developments, and IncreasedDemand by Enterprises and Service Providers Fuel GrowthBOXBOROUGH, Mass., Jan come back j geils band . 12 /PRNewswire/ -- Crossbeam Systems, Inc., theleading provider of next-generation security platforms for high-performancenetworks, today announced that 2008 was its most successful year to date,having realized year over year growth of 56 percent. A number of factorscontributed to making 2008 a milestone year for Crossbeam, including thecompany's global expansion, significant partner and product developments,record sales and profitability, and the continued industry leadership of itsX-Series network security platform."We're very pleased with the progress made in 2008 as evidenced by ouroperating results for the year," said Pete Fiore, president and CEO ofCrossbeam.

"Our investments in expanding our global distribution capacity, theintroduction of innovative new products and technology, and our deep strategicpartnerships with the best security companies in the world have created astrong foundation for growth in the coming year j geils band flamethrower . Moreover, we have establishedourselves as the leading best-of-breed security platform among largeenterprises, carriers and managed service providers j geils band musta got lost live . We'll continue to makeinvestments to extend our technology leadership and deliver superior customervalue."Crossbeam continued to grow its customer base in 2008 with 49 new deployments,including Baylor University, Bouygues Telecom, Celcom Malaysia, Del MonteFoods, John Hancock Financial, Schneider International, Temple University,T-Mobile and U.S Bancorp j geils . Temple University identified Crossbeam as the onlyvendor who supported best-of-breed security applications at the 10-Gigabitspeeds they required.2008 also showed a continued expansion of Crossbeam deployments at existingcustomers such as AT&T, BT, CheckFree, now part of Fiserv, Fujitsu, CIBC, CoxCommunications, Ecritel, Federal Express, Library of Congress, Novartis,Orange UK, Queensland Police Department, Telefonica and Vodafone Italia j giels band . CoxCommunications evaluated Crossbeam as the hands-down best performer with morethan double the throughput rates of its closest competitor.According to Bob Davies, technical services manager of BT Operate, "Crossbeamhas allowed us to easily facilitate delivery of virtualized firewall servicesand avoid appliance sprawl.We slashed the hardware and licensing costs plusall the expenses related to maintenance, support, power and space in our datacenters that would otherwise have resulted from a traditional deploymentmodel. Crossbeam has enabled us to re-design and simplify our network, whileimproving security for us and our customers."Notable 2008 achievements include:--Continued global expansion -- Worldwide demand for the X-Seriesplatformfueled Crossbeam's expansion into Asia-Pacific and Latin America in2008.

Crossbeam opened offices in Japan and Brazil and hiredon-the-ground leadership and expertise from industry veterans MikeMizumoto in Japan and Rogerio de Campos Morais in Brazil to head upoperations and work with leading security partners and distributors toexpand the business . Crossbeam also saw a significant increase in itsbusiness in China, where the X-Series platform recently won the 2008Editors' Choice award from China Information World, one of theleading IT publications.--Released the latest version of Crossbeam's XOS(TM) operating system-- Crossbeam released version 8.1 of its open secure operating system.XOS 8.1 delivered an unparalleled feature set including Crossbeam'spatent-pending secure flow processing capability -- the ability tosequence IP or Ethernet traffic flows from one third-party securityapplication to another running on the same Crossbeam chassis.--Introduced highest performance network IPS with IBM -- Crossbeam andIBMpartnered to introduce the IBM Proventia Network IPS for Crossbeam, anintegrated virtualized security solution that enables serviceprovidersto launch a new generation of "in-the-cloud" network IPSsecurity services j.geils band where did our love go . It also enables enterprises to protect theirnetworkswith unprecedented scalability and resiliency.In tests conducted by Opus One, the IBM Proventia Network IPS running onCrossbeam delivered the industry's highest-performing network IPS, capable ofreaching 40 Gbps of inspection throughput while maintaining the strongestprotection under real-world conditions."In-the-cloud services offer a much more cost-effective and scalable way todeliver security," said Chet Gapinski, vice president of engineering forCrossbeam peter wolf geils . "Crossbeam is now the only security platform provider that canvirtualize both the IBM Proventia Network IPS and Check Point VSX firewall inthese high-performance environments -- making it possible for carriers tooffer multiple, best-of-breed security services via their network cloud . Ourability to do this at superior performance levels is one of the key reasonswe've seen such growth in the carrier market."--Introduced Secure Web Gateway Security Solution with Trend Micro --Crossbeam and Trend Micro introduced a joint solution to deliver oneofthe highest performance email security solutions on the market. Intestsconducted by Opus One, the Trend Micro InterScan Messaging SecuritySuite running on the Crossbeam's X-Series demonstrated superiorperformance and proved that it can handle email loads of theworld's largest enterprises, providing the ability to process up to140 million email messages a day--Continued to dominate the high-end network security market -- IDC'sWorldwide Quarterly Security Appliance Tracker for Q3 2008 showed thatCrossbeam dominated the high-end Unified Threat Management (UTM)marketwith its X-Series Next Generation Security Platform. This marks the15thconsecutive quarter that Crossbeam has led this category, whichincludesproducts that cost at least $50,000.Crossbeam is the only security platform on the market that can provide theconsolidation benefits of a UTM product, while offering customers their choiceof best-of-breed security applications.