TORONTO (Bloomberg) — Canadian stocks climbed to a record for a second day on speculation there will be more take-overs, after TXU Corp. accepted the biggest-ever leveraged buyout and Fortis Inc. agreed to buy a unit of Kinder Morgan Inc.St. Lawrence Cement Group Inc. led commodity producers higher after controlling shareholder Holcim Ltd. offered to buy out minority stockholders. Research In Motion Ltd. surged after being upgraded by an analyst.

“The buy-out craze continues. We will see more deals,” said Gavin Graham, who helps oversee about $5.1 billion as chief investment officer at Guardian Group of Funds in Toronto. US private equity firms may target Canadian companies, because they represent a “cheaper alternative to the US,” he said.

The Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index added 60.93, or 0.5, to 13,404.46 in Toronto, notching a seventh record in nine days. The benchmark trades at a price-to-earnings multiple of 16.8 percent, compared with a 17.8 ratio for the S&P 500. TXU, the largest power producer in Texas, agreed to a $45 billion offer from Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and Texas Pacific Group. KKR, run by Henry Kravis and George Roberts, and David Bonderman’s Texas Pacific will pay $69.25 for each TXU share, or 15 percent more than Dallas-based TXU’s closing price on February 23, the companies said yesterday in a statement.

Buy-out firms announced a record of more than $700 billion in acquisitions last year.

The value of mergers involving Canadian companies rose 55 percent in 2006 to C$257 billion ($222 billion), compared with C$165 billion in 2005, fueled by the oil and gas industry, according to Crosbie & Co., a Canadian investment bank.

Fortis, an investor in electric distribution utilities, will pay C$3.7 billion for Terasen Inc., Kinder Morgan’s retail utility business. Fortis said it plans to raise C$1 billion by selling 38.5 million subscription receipts at C$26 apiece to a group of brokers led by CIBC World Markets, to help pay for the acquisition.