October was a slow month for mergers and acquisitions, but it's too soon to assume this means 2014's takeover boom is over.

Globally, companies struck about $232 billion of takeovers this month through yesterday — the lowest amount since March and below the average of about $300 billion in each of the prior six months.

Rocky stock and debt markets, political uncertainty abroad and the U.S. midterm elections in November all get some blame for giving buyers a reason to slow the torrid pace of deals seen earlier in the year. With two months still to go, 2014 is already the best for takeovers since before the financial crisis, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

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