More than half of acquisitions are said to fail.

A recent example of a troubled deal, not covered in the report, was the acquisition of Internetbased telephony company Skype by eBay in 2005.

Earlier this month eBay announced it was taking a $1.4bn charge connected with the deal.

eBay's troubles over Skype were in line with the survey's findings. Mid-cap companies tend to be better at M&A, while Skype has a market capitalisation of more than $30bn. KPMG also found that companies doing one or two deals per year have the greatest success, while eBay is a serial acquirer.

Cash deals with low price-to-earnings ratios tend to create the most value, the survey found.

Skype was a stock-based deal with a company that was "pre-earnings".

The most successful deals tend to have a rationale to increase financial strength or get better access to customers, whereas the eBay deal for Skype had a murky rationale.

Irish companies will be in a position to become more acquisitive in the next five years, said Robert Dix of KPMG. While Ireland has already produced highly competent serial acquirers like CRH, they may prove a dangerous example for companies that follow.

"Doing deals for deals' sake can be ruination of a company, " said Dix, "when people doing them are not professionals."

More than 5bn in mergers and acquisitions by Irish companies were counted up in the third quarter of this year, according to a survey by corporate financiers Ion Equity. The first nine months of this year saw 13bn in deals, up 82% on the same period in 2006.