Photo

Germany’s businesses have been the rare bright spot in the European economy in recent years, generating jobs and profits even as neighboring countries face persistent unemployment.

Now, many of the biggest German companies are capitalizing on their strength and striking big deals for overseas competitors.

In recent days, two multibillion-dollar deals were announced. On Sunday, the German engineering conglomerate Siemens announced a $7.6 billion acquisition of the Dresser-Rand Group, the United States oil products company. And on Monday morning, Merck of Germany, the chemical and drug giant, said it would pay $17 billion for Sigma-Aldrich, an American life sciences company. (The German Merck is not affiliated with the United States drug maker Merck & Company.)

“The overall confidence that is still prevalent here is a big factor,” said Tim Brandi, head of corporate practice at the law firm Hogan Lovells in Frankfurt. “It’s been a big rush in just a week’s time.”

Video

Those two acquisitions lifted German acquisitions to more than $105 billion for the year, the most since 2007 and the third-highest total in 15 years, according to Thomson Reuters.

“It’s an optimal time to look for big acquisitions, especially with the financing market open and German corporations having strong balance sheets,” Dirk Albersmeier, head of German mergers and acquisitions at JPMorgan Chase in Frankfurt, said in an email. “So C.E.O.s are asking, ‘Why not do it now?’ ”

Merck will pay $140 a share in cash, or $17 billion, for Sigma-Aldrich, representing a 37 percent premium on the company’s closing price from Friday. The deal will expand Merck’s worldwide presence and represents the latest bet on life sciences by a German company.

The deal is expected to increase Merck’s presence in North America, give it added exposure to markets in Asia and increase its product offerings. The Americas accounted for about half of Sigma-Aldrich’s sales in 2013.

The combined life sciences business, if the merger had happened last year, would have had pro forma sales of about 4.7 billion euros (about $6 billion). Laboratory research and academia would have accounted for about half of the combined division’s sales.

Sigma-Aldrich, based in St. Louis, produces more than 230,000 chemicals and other products that are used in laboratory research and a variety of industrial and commercial sectors, including the pharmaceutical and food and beverage industries. It posted sales of $2.7 billion in 2013 and employs about 9,000 people in 37 countries.

Merck, which operates under the EMD brand in the United States and Canada, manufactures products for the pharmaceutical and chemical sectors. It posted revenue of about €11.1 billion in 2013 and employs about 39,000 people in 66 countries.

For Siemens, acquiring the Dresser-Rand Group signals an even bigger push into the booming American sector. Siemens is trying to position itself as a player in the shale oil boom, which has significantly bolstered oil and gas production in the United States and is likely to lead to a sharp increase in spending on the sort of heavy oil and gas industry compressors, turbines and other equipment that Dresser supplies, analysts say.

The price tag was seen as high, especially considering that orders for Dresser-Rand’s oil and gas products and services slumped last year. But Siemens is betting that, in the long term, Dresser-Rand will strengthen its ability to cash in on unconventional drilling techniques like hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, that have made the United States what Joe Kaeser, the Siemens chief executive, has called “the place to be for oil and gas.”

Julien Laurent, an oil and gas analyst at Natixis in Paris, said on Monday, “They are reinforcing their oil and gas business and focusing more on the U.S. market.”

The acquisition of Dresser-Rand also allows Mr. Kaeser to claim a victory after a recent loss to General Electric, Siemens’s longtime rival. Over the summer, Siemens lost out to G.E. for the energy assets being sold by the French industrial group Alstom.

But the merger mania sweeping German businesses is not isolated to particular industries. In addition to the drug and engineering deals, German technology companies and auto parts makers have been active, too.

Last week, the big enterprise software maker SAP announced it would acquire Concur Technologies of Seattle for $8.3 billion. Days before that, ZF Friedrichshafen said it would pay more than $13 billion for TRW Automotive Holdings, a car parts maker.

And Merck’s deal for Sigma-Aldrich is just the latest bet on the life sciences sector by a German company. On Thursday, the German drug maker Bayer announced that it was planning to spin off its polymer business into a new, publicly listed company as it focuses on health care and life sciences.

In May, Bayer agreed to pay $14.2 billion for Merck & Company’s consumer care business, acquiring popular brands like the allergy medicine Claritin and Coppertone sunscreen.

Around the globe, mergers and acquisitions have picked up, reaching the highest levels since before the financial crisis. Pent-up demand for deals, investor appetite for growth, cheap debt and a lack of other obvious ways to cut costs have led many companies to strike deals.

“This is a good time for them to make acquisitions,” Mr. Brandi said. “They have huge war chests of cash, and acquisition financing is also available.”

Many of the deals struck by German companies have been for American targets, highlighting the relative health of the American market.

“The U.S. has always been a very attractive market for German companies looking to make acquisitions abroad,” Mr. Albersmeier of JPMorgan, said. “Over the last couple of years, there has been some hesitancy among German corporates to do really big transformational deals. But given the strength of their balance sheets and global positions, it was only a matter of time.”

The renewed deal-making has also come regardless of the geopolitical unrest in Ukraine and the Middle East.

“Despite all the political turmoil going on in Eastern Europe and the rest of the world, the overall business confidence has not been affected much here in Germany,” Mr. Brandi said.

With conditions for deals still ideal and several months left in the year, the list of big deals struck by German companies is likely to grow longer still. What is more, the deals being struck by German acquirers stand in contrast to the recent wave of inversion deals by American companies, which are intended to lower tax rates.

“All of them are strategic acquisitions,” Mr. Brandi said of the recent German deals.

“This is nothing like what we’ve seen from some of the U.S. acquisitions that are driven more by taxes.”

Siemens Agrees to Buy Dresser-Rand, an Oil Services Company, for $7.6 Billion The giant engineering conglomerate will pay $83 a share for the Houston-based Dresser-Rand Group, giving Siemens a major presence in the American energy sector.

Chad Bray, Stanley Reed and Jack Ewing contributed reporting.