Nowhere are bragging rights more hotly contested than on Wall Street. And for the first six months of 2023 Goldman Sachs kept the crown as the top M&A advisor globally, according to new data from both Dealogic and Refinitiv.
Goldman worked on 145 deals valued at $321.3 billion during the first six months of this year, Dealogic said. In second place was JPMorgan with $309.9 billion in transactions, while BofA Securities jumped up a spot to third place with $228.7 billion in deals. Refinitiv data had Goldman in first with $305.6 billion worth of deals, while JPMorgan placed second with $301.5 billion, and Morgan Stanley ranked third with $193 billion in mergers. BofA was fourth with $192.8 billion in transactions, said Refinitiv, an LSEG (London Stock Exchange Group) business.
Goldman and JPMorgan declined to comment.
Bloomberg, using its own data, reported last week that Goldman had lost its crown as the top global M&A advisor for the first time in five years, tumbling to second place in the league table rankings with $237 billion worth of transactions. JPMorgan was the lead M&A advisor this year with $284 billion in deals, the story said.
Investment banks typically use league tables as a marketing tool to attract new clients.
For the layperson, league tables don’t really mean too much. But on Wall Street, it can be contentious. In April, Refinitiv had JPMorgan edging out Goldman Sachs for the top spot at the end of the first quarter. Dealogic had it the other way around, Reuters reported. This caused Goldman to ask Refinitiv for an explanation while JPMorgan quizzed Dealogic, the story said. Refinitiv and Dealogic will typically provide data with slight differences, but it’s rare for them to have different winners of the most coveted spot in the league tables. Dealogic told Reuters that its methodology is based on feedback from the market, while Refinitiv said it had a process in place that couldn’t be unduly influenced.
Otherwise, the slowdown in mergers continued during the first half of 2023. The number of global announced M&A transactions dropped by 21% as of July 3, while valuations plunged by 39%, Dealogic said. So far in 2023, there were 18,311 global announced deals, valued at $1.36 trillion. This compares to 23,247 mergers totaling $2.24 trillion for the same time period last year. The drop in deals is the slowest since the pandemic of 2020 caused dealmaking to go on pause for several months.
The biggest deal so far this year is Pfizer’s $45.6 billion buy of cancer specialist Seagen. Glencore’s nearly $32 billion offer for Teck Resources’ steelmaking core business came in second while a SPAC merger, Black Spade Acquisition’s $23 billion combination with VinFast Auto, ranked third.
When it comes to private equity, the number of global deals fell by 30% to 1,309. But valuation plunged by about 61% to $314.6 billion. In the U.S., the results were just as bad. The number of U.S. private equity deals fell by 33% to 519 transactions valued at $168.5 billion, a 59% drop. The biggest global PE deal was Bunge, the grains merchant that is backed by Glencore, which agreed to buy Viterra, a Canadian grain handling business, in June. Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and British Columbia Investment Management Corp both own stakes in Viterra.
And now for this month's cartoon from Ian Foley...
See you tomorrow,
Luisa Beltran
Twitter: @LuisaRBeltran
Email: luisa.beltran@fortune.com
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