SOUTH Coast companies look set for another world-beating year of striking overseas takeover deals, according to a new survey.

The KPMG Corporate Finance report showed Britain's overseas takeover activity was already near to beating its global record for the whole of last year.

When four recently announced megamergers feed through into the figures, the UK will have clocked up 142 billion dollars of deals so far in 1999 - 12 per cent higher than last year's total.

The first three months of 1998 saw cross-border takeover deals worth $9.5 billion made by British companies.

This was only the fourth highest figure in the world, being beaten by the US, France and Japan. But KPMG said the first quarter figures missed out AstraZeneca's $35 billion merger, completed in April, and three others yet to be finally sealed.

They are Vodafone's $60 billion Airtouch deal, BP Amoco's $27 billion Arco takeover and HSBC's $10 billion move on Republic New York.

Stephen Barrett, head of mergers and acquisitions at KPMG Corporate Finance said: "It looks like British companies are going to beat the rest of the world again."

Last year, Britain just pipped the US, traditionally always the most active overseas predator, for the top spot.

Mr Barrett said companies were increasingly wanting to be represented across the world, with English-speaking firms usually the most active. The KPMG figures also showed overall global merger activity was likely to beat last year's $544 billion total.

Converted for the new archive on 25 January 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.