Domino theory

That takeover activity should be gaining momentum is entirely plausible. Ever-present technological change means there is always a slow-changing list of would-be predators and victims. Domino, whose speciality is making bar-code printing equipment, may be categorised as the victim, especially as it has struggled against bigger competitors, such as Zebra Technologies (NasdaqGS: ZBRA). However, Brother is not a powerful predator. Its bosses may feel obliged to diversify the group's revenue stream precisely because of its own struggle against the market power of Canon (TSE: 7751) and Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) in desk-top printers.

In addition, the healthy state of both company balance sheets and profit margins throughout the developed world stimulates takeover activity. With firepower to hand, company bosses become increasingly inclined to maintain those healthy margins by financial engineering rather than business improvements. The fact that their own rewards are closely tied to the size of the company they run - and rarely its profitability - only gives them extra incentive to grow by acquisition. The UK's takeover-friendly legal system also makes British companies more realistic targets than their counterparts in the rest of the EU.

So who's next? Obviously it's easier to ask the question than answer it. The 13 companies in the table are not so much a roll call of UK manufacturers ripe for picking as a schedule of successful UK companies that many competitors would like to own; and all of them have bigger - mostly foreign - rivals who are well capable of completing a takeover.

Even the biggest of the 13 - defence and aerospace supplier Meggitt (MGGT), whose equity is valued at £4.6bn - is dwarfed by its most likely predator, France's Safran (ENXTPA: SAF), whose market value is almost £20bn. It's easy to put Safran into the mix because only last month its boss, Jean-Paul Hertemann, said the company was on the lookout for acquisitions. And takeover speculation may be spicing Meggitt's share price already. The stock is at an all-time high, having gained more than a third since last autumn and despite results for 2014 that were little to write home about.

Of the others, it is widely assumed that instruments maker Renishaw (RSW) and castings maker Castings (CGS) will be the scenes of corporate activity when their long-standing bosses finally call it a day. At Renishaw, the co-founders, Sir David McMurty and John Deer, are 74 and 76 respectively; at Castings, the chairman, Brian Cooke, who has recently moved to a non-executive role having run the company since 1970, is 74. So it may not be long now, especially as - in Renishaw's case - a merger with Spectris (SXS) has looked the perfect corporate fit for some years.

However, the takeover long shot that I might back is Glasgow-based engineer The Weir Group (WEIR). That's partly because its shares are the most depressed of the 13, weakened by the downturn in fracking activity in the US. Yet many City analysts have long suggested it was just a matter of time before US pump-making giant Schlumberger (NYSE: SLB) bid for Weir. Last summer, with Weir's share price at 2,620p, I crunched the numbers and was disappointed to find how overvalued the shares looked. Almost a year on, with the share price 32 per cent lower and a poorish year - 2009 - dropping out of my valuation reckoning, the picture could be quite different. Weir certainly looks worth re-visiting.

Who's next to fall?

Source: S&P Capital IQ

■ Warren Buffett often quips that there is a correlation between the practice of value investing and longevity. The Bard of Omaha is now 84 and Charles Munger, his vice-chairman at Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.B), has just turned 91. But these two were babes compared with the oldest value investor of all, who died last month, taking with him links with pre-War Wall Street that would not have still seemed possible in 2015. Irving Kahn made his first trade in the summer of 1929 when he short sold copper just months before the Wall Street Crash. Two years later he became the teaching assistant on the finance course at New York's Columbia University that was run by Benjamin Graham. That move sealed an 84-year adherence to value investing, the discipline that dictates the investment ideas of Kahn Brothers, an investment management firm that Kahn founded with his two sons when he was just 73. See Kahn, Buffett and others talking about Benjamin Graham on http://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/valueinvesting/about.