Among the big business stories of 2016 were multibillion dollar insurance mergers, the long-awaited start of a major new hotel project, a gradually strengthening economy and the fallout from surprising votes on both sides of the Atlantic that will have implications for the island for years to come.

However, none is likely to stay in the memory longer than the sight of the Gombeys invading the New York Stock Exchange. Grizzled traders who thought they’d seen it all were left stunned by a troupe of tomahawk-wielding, drumbeating dancers sporting peacock feather headdresses on that remarkable September day.

It was all in aid of celebrating Butterfield Bank’s initial public offering of shares of the NYSE, perhaps the biggest event in the bank’s 158-year history.

After Michael Dunkley, the Premier, rang the opening bell along with Michael Collins, Butterfield’s chief executive officer, and Barclay Simmons, the bank’s chairman, the offering went as smoothly as could have been hoped.

Butterfield was aiming to raise $250 million, with some of the shares being sold by existing shareholders including Carlyle Group and Wellcome Trust, two of the big investors who had helped the bank achieve a badly needed $550 million recapitalisation in 2010.

The IPO target price was $23.50 and the shares ended their first trading day on $24.75. The Premier declared himself “blown away” and said it had been a great day for Bermuda.

Things have gone from good to better for the bank and its shareholders as the price had soared past $32.50 at the time of writing, and the bank had paid off the $200 million in 8 per cent preference shares that had been hanging around its neck.

While the good times rolled for Butterfield, the island’s economy continued its emergence from a six-year recession. The first half of the year saw gross domestic product rise steadily, meaning the island has seen five quarters of economic growth out of the past six, according to government statistics.

Retail sales — often described by Bob Richards, the Finance Minister, as the best indicator of the health of the economy — continued to strengthen through the first nine months of the year, led by growth in vehicle and building supplies sales. In fact May was the lone month when retailers took less at the till than a year earlier.

However, jobs growth proved elusive once again. The government’s Employment Briefs, published in June — although it was based on a survey carried out in 2015 — showed total jobs fell by 156 to 33,319. It meant that 2015 was the seventh successive year that the number of total filled positions fell.

Even with economic expansion, achieving jobs growth means overcoming headwinds that are unlikely to stop blowing any time soon. One of those headwinds is the departure of hundreds of baby boomers from the workforce as they hit retirement.

Another is the relentless advance of technology, causing jobs to fall foul of automation. And a third headwind is consolidation, seen most notably in the insurance and telecommunications sectors, sometimes leading to job losses as combined companies streamline operations.

The big deals continued in 2016. Ironshore was sold for the second time in successive years in 2016. The fast-growing global insurer was acquired by United States insurance giant Liberty Mutual, which agreed to pay $3 billion to Chinese owner Fosun International, which had acquired the Ironshore only in 2015.

There was also evidence that the consolidation has entered a second phase in which some of the acquirers will be themselves gobbled up by bigger fish. Endurance Specialty Holdings, which took over fellow Bermuda reinsurer Montpelier Re in 2015, was bought for $6.3 billion by Sompo, a huge Japan-based insurer.

Allied World Assurance Company, another of the class of 2001 companies formed in Bermuda after the 9/11 terrorist attacks was the next to get snapped up, acquired by Canadian insurer and investment firm Fairfax Financial Holdings, which agreed in December to pay $4.9 billion for the insurer and reinsurer. Although Allied World moved its corporate domicile to Switzerland in 2010, it still has a large Bermuda operation employing some 125 people.

What each of these three deals had in common was that the acquirers have all made clear their desire to leave the Bermudian companies intact together with their brands and senior management teams. The impression is that they will continue to operate as stand-alone companies but within a larger group.

Whether it pans out that way in the coming years remains to be seen, but such a scenario would mean that the island is getting off relatively lightly in terms of job losses from the tidal wave of consolidation sweeping through the industry.

In 2016, reinsurers continued to be pressured by declining prices for their product and lingering low interest rates, which crimped both underwriting and investment performance. But it was a profitable year nonetheless, helped by a lack of catastrophe losses, notwithstanding August storm Hermine becoming the first hurricane to make landfall in Florida since 2005.

There was a boost for the construction industry with groundbreaking at the new resort project at Morgan’s Point and that will be followed up with another major hotel project set to start in St George’s next year.

The biggest move in the telecoms sector involved KeyTech Ltd, which completed a transaction that gave US firm ATN a 51 per cent stake in the Bermuda company and also combined its CellOne, Logic and CableVision brands into a new brand — One Communications.

Tumultuous events overseas had repercussions for Bermuda. The spotlight on tax avoidance intensified with the April release of the “Panama Papers”, the leak of thousands of documents from offshore law firm Mossack Fonseca, which implicated wealthy people from all over the world in tax avoidance schemes. Even though Bermuda barely warranted a mention in the story, it did not escape attention in the aftermath.

In June, the people of Britain voted to leave the European Union. Uncertainty over what the UK business environment may look like after Brexit may create opportunities for Bermuda, according to many international business experts who spoke on the topic this year. Certainly, the Solvency II equivalence earned last year — which allows Bermuda-based insurers to compete on a level playing field in the EU — looks more than ever like an ace card in the game of insurance domiciles.

And then there was Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election in November, with the promise of tax cuts, massive infrastructure spending, rising interest rates and perhaps trade wars too. While much remains uncertain, tax reform has the greatest likelihood of happening in many years, given the Republicans’ control of the White House and both houses of Congress — and Bermudian eyes will be watching developments closely.

The Bottom Line’s 2016 Top Ten Employers survey, the rule of law prevailed as Marshall Diel & Myers topped the rankings, ending FedEx’s three-year winning streak.

Growing confidence in the economy was reflected by an increase in property sales. There was a five-year high in home sales and a six-year high in commercial property sales in 2015.

The hope for realtors and the rest of us is that the momentum continues into 2017 — the long-awaited America’s Cup year that many are banking on to shift the economy into a higher gear.