Wall Street deal-makers enjoy biggest merger boom since 2000

New York

STOCKS are surging, corporate executives are ambitious and debt is cheap. The result is one of the biggest booms in mergers and acquisitions (M&A).

A US$100 billion worth of mergers made on Monday added to the tally, putting Wall Street on pace for a year of deal-making rivalling those during the dotcom bubble and the private equity upsurge just before the financial crisis.

The announcement of two more mega-deals - the US$66 billion acquisition of Botox-maker Allergan by Actavis, and the US$34.6 billion takeover of oil field services firm Baker Hughes by a bigger rival, Halliburton - made Monday a symbolic tipping point.

With those transactions on the books, about US$1.5 trillion in deals targeting American companies have been announced this year, the most since 2000…