Foreign acquisitions of Turkish companies in 2016 have tripled in comparison with the previous year, and have now reached a volume of 18.9 billion Turkish liras ($5.1 billion), according to the data released by the Turkish Competition Authority (TCA) on Monday.

The Turkish Competition Authority reportedly examined 209 cases of mergers and acquisitions during the past year, including privatization and applications on transactions that were beyond TCA's authority. Out of these transactions, 34 were conducted for companies whose parties were all organized according to Turkish law and 107 transactions were conducted for companies entering business according to the laws of other countries, while 50 cases of transactions were processed for ventures in which Turkish and foreign companies participated.

While the total volume of transactions for companies with Turkish roots reached TL 29.3 billion ($7.9 billion) in 2016, investments for the acquisition of Turkish companies reached TL 18.9 billion ($5.11 billion). Mergers and acquisitions for individuals and companies of foreign origin rose to a transaction value of TL 11.6 billion ($3.1 billion) and companies composed of both Turkish and foreign parties came close to a transaction value of TL 10.2 billion ($2.7 billion).

Main areas of investment in 2016 were financial intermediary institutions with a transaction value of TL 8.2 billion ($2.2 billion), the production, transmission and delivery of electric power with TL 5.8 billion ($1.5 billion), followed by processing machines and machine tool production with TL 2.7 billion ($731 million) as well as cinema, video and TV programs at TL 2 billion ($541 million) and trade in agricultural staples and livestock at TL 1.6 billion ($433 million).

Leader in terms of foreign investments into Turkish companies for the past year are the Netherlands with a total of nine acquisitions of Turkish companies. They are followed by Germany, with six transactions, English and Japanese investors at four and U.S.-, French, Swiss and Korean investors at three investment transactions each.