Whether it’s exclusive mandate, with sell or buy-side initiative or partial services, such as due-diligence, every facet of the deal has to be reviewed and assessed by financial advisors and law firms. Wall-Street is short listing the most active advisors, investment banks and law firms in mergers and acquisitions in 2008 and in first quarter 2009, based on a DealWatch survey.
Top 10 consultants/ deal size
Investment bank Merrill Lynch took part in the largest deals of 2008 and of first quarter 2009, while Deloitte had the highest deal count (nine, worth an aggregate value of 770 million US dollars), according to DealWatch.
According to DealWatch methodology, merger and acquisition deals and initial public offerings larger than 1 million US dollars were considered.
US Investment bank, Merrill Lynch took part in only two deals worth approximately 3.165 billion dollars, followed in the top of financial advisors in the mergermarket by JP Morgan Chase with 3 deals worth 2.868 billion dollars. Among the biggest deal that JP Morgan Chase assisted, is the second largest corporate deal in 2009: the full acquisition of local insurer Unita by Uniqa.
Erste Corporate Finance rounds out the top three financial advisors in terms of deals and IPO value in Romania, only to leave European investment bank Rotschild on fourth, who took part in the acquisition by Groupama.
The investment bank is active in local advisory market since 1998, and as of 2000, it has a new senior country advisor, Florin Olteanu. However, Arielle Malard, managing director of Rotschild’s operations in Paris involved actively in the deal.
“The size was the only criteria we’ve pursued, as representative of vendors. We’ve managed to get the best price because we used the SPA contract (Share Purchase Agreement – e.n) as mechanism in the stages of M&A lifecycle”, baroness Ar
