Goldman Sachs tops M&A adviser league table

Goldman Sachs has topped GlobalData’s Adviser League Table tracking mergers and acquisitions activity for the first three quarters of 2019.

The firm was involved in 249 deals with a value of $982.3 bn, bettering second-placed JPMorgan (211 deals, $777.9 bn value) by more than $200 mn. Morgan Stanley rounds out the top three, with 182 deals with a deal value of $732.4 bn.

Ravi Tokala, financial deals analyst at GlobalData, says mega-deals – deals with values of more than $10 bn – played a huge role in deciding the top spots in the table. He notes that of the top 30 deals by deal value, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley advised on 22, 15 and 13 of those mega-deals, respectively.

M Klein and Company posts the largest percentage deal value increase (2,290.31 percent) after involvement in deals valued at $153 bn in the first three quarters of 2019, up from $6.4 bn in deal value in the first three quarters of 2018. Tokala says Klein’s involvement in three major deals is responsible for the steep increase in deal value. Those deals are Saudi Aramco’s acquisition of a 70 percent stake in SABIC from the Public Investment Fund (Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund), Occidental Petroleum’s acquisition of Anadarko Petroleum and Barrick Gold’s proposed merger with Newmont Mining (now Newmont Goldcorp).

Deutsche Bank sees the biggest decrease in deal value, from $435.6 bn during the first three quarters of 2018 to $117.7 bn in 2019, a drop of 72.98 percent. Tokala says Deutsche Bank was not involved in any major transactions during the three quarters, whereas in 2018 it was involved in several major deals, including Atlantia’s acquisition of Abertis Infraestructuras and E.ON’s acquisition of a stake in innogy.

Overall, the average deal value for Q1-Q3 2019 was $130.77 mn, versus an average deal value of $204.82 mn for Q1-Q3 2018.

GlobalData says its Adviser League Table is ‘based on the real-time tracking of thousands of company websites, advisory firm websites and other reliable sources available on the secondary domain. A dedicated team of analysts monitors all these sources to gather in-depth details for each deal, including adviser names.’