Although the biggest universal banks regularly appear higher up the M&A advisory league tables by transaction value, Rothschild & Co works on far more deals than any competitor. According to Dealogic it advised on 222 deals in the 12 months under review compared with Goldman Sachs’s 132.
The firm has the largest number of advisory bankers in the region – around 800 – with dual headquarters in Paris and London and teams of local specialists in 15 other offices in western Europe.
As well as advising on a large number of medium-sized deals, it played prominent roles in three of the top-10 deals of the period: advising Snam on the Italian energy infrastructure operator’s joint acquisition of a 49% stake in Adnoc’s gas pipelines with an enterprise value of $20.7 billion; French payments company Ingenico Group on the $21 billion acquisition by Worldline; and the consortium led by Advent, Cinven and Germany’s RAG on the €17.2