With June nearly over, everyone is rushing to produce their own snapshot of what happened during the first six months of the year. There are first-half rankings of investment bankers, traders, underwriters and pretty much every function you can imagine on Wall Street, reflecting the industry’s insistence on not just keeping up with the Joneses but beating them at their own game.
One of these round-ups comes from Mergermarket, which has tabulated a league table of M&A advisers. Interestingly, the big winner isn’t either JPMorgan Chase (which takes the No. 1 spot in terms of the total value of deals its bankers have worked on, with $159.9 billion) or Goldman Sachs, which would come first if you re-ordered the list by the number of deals. (Goldman worked on an estimated 71 transactions in the period up until June 19, Mergermarket calculated, while JPMorgan Chase advised clients on only 58 deals.)
The real winner may well be Bank of America Merrill Lynch, which moved into the second spot by deal value (it advised on transactions worked $148.9 billion, compared to only $140.8 billion for Goldman Sachs) and it moved up a notch in the ratings from third in the year-ago league tables to No. 2 today.
It looks as if JPMorgan Chase and Goldman will have company in their head-to-head tussle over preeminence in the investment banking world.
Other banks made even bigger moves, although they are much smaller in size. Thanks to the $23 billion acquisition of H.J. Heinz by Berkshire Hathaway and 3G Capital earlier this year, Centerview Partners (one of Heinz’s advisers) and Moelis & Co. (which advised a Heinz board committee) saw big gains in their rankings.
These two independent investment banks, both of which are staffed with some of Wall Street’s brightest bankers, have carved out an increasingly large niche for themselves in the post-crisis world. Centerview jumped from 14th in the year-earlier league table to break into the top 10 this year, landing at No. 9. Moelis surged from 22nd to 12th. Rival indie firm Greenhill & Co. leapt from 34th to 17th.
The losers? Well, they tended to make less dramatic but equally significant moves. Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and Lazard slid a notch or two (or three) but all stayed in the top 10; UBS lost two rungs to end up at No. 14, while RBC Capital Markets, a division of the Royal Bank of Canada, retreated from 10th to 16th. Jefferies also lost ground, ending up at 19th, down from 15 a year ago. Look for at least some of these figures – if they hold up over the course of the year – to be reflected in bonus payouts this coming winter.
