“Many of the capital raisings over the past 12 months were designed to get balance sheets in order,” Ding said.

“What we will see this financial year is many companies looking to raise capital with an eye to growing their business.”

As long as a company’s balance sheet was in order, Ding said, it was a good time to raise capital to fund acquisitions as there would be good opportunities available to pick up businesses at lower prices than would have been available 18 months ago.

“If, as a company you chance upon a good opportunity to grow and buy an asset, the market will support you if you have a compelling story.

“As well as this, we have already seen some companies go back a second time to the market to raise capital, so this may be another trend that continues over the next 12 months.”

Ding said the year 2008-09 had been a busy one at the firm, which was involved in more than half of Australia’s top 25 capital raisings, including three of the top four: the $15 billion Rio Tinto capital raising; the $4.7 billion Wesfarmers capital raising, and the $2.5 billion Westpac capital raising.

The value of the capital raisings the firm was involved in was $48 billion. Of that amount, $35 billion was raised in the past six months.

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Allens also worked on the Goodman low document capital raising, which led the way for other companies to implement the procedure.

“Historically the low document method hasn’t been understood, and the question was whether or not under the circumstances trying out something new was a sensible thing to do,” Ding said.

“But they tried it, and it worked, and it was the first of many low document capital raisings that followed.”

“The Tabcorp capital raising was the first corporate bond issue to the retail market in almost 20 years.”