Name any sector and you had investment bankers hovering over it during 2006.

An unprecedented 740 Indian companies from industries as diverse as casting to agro-chemicals to coffee bars to regulars such as software and banking were involved in mergers and acquisitions and private equity deals worth $26.7 billion.

This is a 45 per cent increase over 2005 figure of $18.3 billion, according to Grant & Thornton, an accounting and corporate advisory firm.

A total of 460 M&A deals worth $19.5 billion were struck in 2006, an increase of 19 per cent, while a total of $7.2 billion were channelled through the private equity route, showing a three time increase over 2005.

Fuelling this quantum jump was the fact that there were eight M&A deals greater than $500 million and one PE deal greater than $500 million.

This year there were 82 inbound deals worth $5.5 billion, 170 outbound deals worth $9.57 billion and 208 domestic deals worth $4.43 billion. (Refer table).

According to industry analysts, many Indian companies have reached the size and scale where they can dream of being global companies and their market caps enable them to make acquisitions overseas.

"This is enabling them to plug competency gaps and increase market reach," said Sanjeev Bikhchandani, CEO, Info Edge India.