CORPORATE and banking lawyers at MacRoberts worked on completed deals worth a total of £2 billion across 2013, double the amount seen in 2012.

Merger and acquisition transactions in 2013 totalled more than £300 million, with typical values in Scotland of between £5m and £30m.

The firm, which said volumes were up around 50%, worked on the purchase of Letts Filofax Group, the sale of BDL's hotel management business to South Africa's Redefine Property and its portfolio of Ramada Encore Hotels to a Hong Kong company, the Wallaces Express joint venture with Tennent's owner C&C Group and the acquisition of Glasgow Prestwick Airport by the Scottish Government.

Neil Kennedy, a partner in the corporate finance team at MacRoberts, said: "Many of our deals involved foreign buyers investing in solid, well-performing Scottish SMEs with the purchase financed off their own balance sheet or by overseas banks. The main aim of the acquisition is to give access to strategic UK markets and often to particular customers of the target business. So, for many foreign companies, Scotland is an attractive place to do business."

MacRoberts said the oil and gas sector continues to be one of the strongest performing in terms of deals.

The Dundee office at the firm, which opened in April 2013, worked on the sale of Dominion Technology Gases to US firm Praxair and the sale of HCS Control Systems to management which was backed by Maven Capital Partners, Simmons and Front Row Energy Partners

The corporate team also worked with spin-outs from Dundee and Strathclyde universities and advised on the £3m financing round by software company Smarter Grid Solutions.