“2015 is the new 2007.” That is the comparison being drawn by dealmakers in the towering offices of bulge bracket banks, and at their boutique rivals, on Wall Street, in the City of London and in Hong Kong. But almost as soon as the sentence is uttered, the bankers quickly add that, this time, the outcome “will be different”.

In many ways, the inputs are different, too. Compared with the boom years formergers and acquisitions in the mid 2000s, the global economy is weaker, interest rates are at historic lows and many companies are sitting on large piles of cash. What is the same, eight years on, is bankers’ ability to push up valuations — so much so that this year is set to be the strongest for deals since the 2007 peak.

Steve Baronoff, head of M&A at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, admits that valuations in riskier sectors, such as biotech, are starting to look “toppy” but insists that, overall, most deals in the first half of the year have been carried out for strategic reasons.