JPMorgan is the standout winner of the award for the region’s best bank for advisory. According to Dealogic data, the firm advised on 22 completed M&A transactions in the year to the end of March 2022 worth a total of $66.51 billion, giving it a 34.2% market share. No other investment bank came close in terms of either deal volume or deal count.
Sometimes regional data can be skewed by a single, blowout deal or by a handful of large, connected transactions by a longstanding corporate or financial client. In any given year a bank can get lucky; so a key question is whether a bank is active in multiple sectors and markets.
In JPMorgan’s case, the answer this year is an emphatic yes. The US bank was sole financial adviser to National Commercial Bank on its merger with Riyadh-based Samba Financial Group. The $21.7 billion deal was completed in April 2021, with the two parties coming together to form Saudi National Bank, now the largest lender in the kingdom, with assets of more than SR900 billion ($240 billion).
“Historically,