Nostalgia is understandable as yet another year draws to a close, but why are buyout firms and acquisitive companies once again stalking their old prey?

Just before Christmas, the crafts retailer Jo-Ann Stores (ticker: JAS) agreed to be sold for $1.6 billion to Leonard Green & Partners. The Los Angeles buyout firm had looked at Jo-Ann in 2007, before the credit crunch put the kibosh on any union. The same Leonard Green also just teamed up with TPG Capital in November to offer $3 billion for J. Crew Group (JCG), which TPG had already bought and taken private once before, back in 1997. They must really like each other.

Rekindling some old dalliances can be all too easy. There is history and familiarity, and you already know which buttons to push. You get to recycle any old homework or due diligence that was done. The stock market has just repaired to levels it held right before Lehman Brothers collapsed, but now much of the debt and risk have been transferred from the private sector to the government (thank you, Uncle Sam!). Your customers are regaining some of their old pep (just try making restaurant reservations in New York these days), and tight-fisted lenders are beginning to loosen their grip, with commercial and industrial loans ticking up 0.2% in the fourth quarter, the first thaw in two years.

Some things have changed, of course. Financing is far more conservative and buyout firms are inking deals with less debt and more equity. This squeezes potential returns, but prices are more reasonable than in 2007. Buyout firms and companies also have cash earning no interest at the bank that they’re anxious to deploy. And the urgency is exacerbated by the grudging acceptance that this sub-par economic recovery may nonetheless prove sustainable, and price tags can still get pricier.

Takeover speculation grew more rampant in the last days of 2010, or maybe it just seemed that way with news flow thin and trading traffic scant. BJ’s Wholesale Club (BJ) gained 8% last week amid reports that–here it comes—Leonard Green is keen on buying more of the discount club after it had already amassed a 9.5% stake in July.

It wasn’t all just the Leonard Green show. Anadarko Petroleum (APC) jumped 7% Thursday amid chatter that the Australian mining giant BHP Billiton (BHP), which had failed in its lunge at Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan (POT), is now on the prowl for resource outfits. Some analysts quickly hailed the good fit between Anadarko’s exploration results and BHP’s ambitious reach. Shares trading near 46 times projected profits also have returned to levels before the BP (BP) oil spill, which suggests investors have grown more comfortable with Anadarko’s liability as a part-owner of the doomed rig.

Lest acquisitive companies stalk only their exes, UBS’ special-situations sales desk screened recently for mergers announced between 2004 and ’08 that were called off for one reason or another. Weeding out very large targets and financial companies, they narrowed the list of more than 60 onetime targets down to a shorter roster that includes Republic Services (RSG), Mylan (MYL), Atmel (ATML), Herbalife (HLF), Huntsman (HUN), Alliance Data Systems (ADS), Corn Products (CPO), Harman (HAR) and Penn National Gaming (PENN) (Source: Barrons Online).