(Bloomberg) -- Bank of Montreal’s capital-markets chief said last year’s record-breaking stretch of dealmaking will continue in 2022 with plenty of capital scouring for acquisitions.

“We’re seeing very similar trends to what we saw last year,” BMO Capital Markets head Dan Barclay said Monday in an interview on BNN Bloomberg Television. “You’ve got confidence in the future. We still have, even with rising rates, a low-cost financing environment and lots of lots capital looking for deals.”

Last year marked the biggest mergers and acquisition boom in history, with companies announcing more than $5 trillion in deals, to eclipse the previous annual record set in 2007, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Canada also saw last year setting a new high water mark for acquisitions, with about $437.6 billion in transactions.

Inflation may do more to slow dealmaking than the modest rate increases that are expected this year, Barclay said. That inflation, along with investors’ preferences shifting to value investments from growth stocks, also may spur deals in the commodities and industrials sectors as well, he said.

One area of dealmaking that may slow compared to last year are those involving blank check firms, known as special purpose acquisition companies or SPACs, he said. But even that sector has picked up from the “doldrums” of the middle of last year, he said.

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.