Credit Suisse First Boston's acquisition of BZW's equities and corporate advisory divisions at the start of the year was a quite coup for the Swiss bank (and cheap at twice the price the bank paid £100 million). At a stroke, the Swiss bank had suddenly become one of the top equity brokers in the UK, ranking second so far, up from 15th last year.
An internal list shows that of 30 major UK equity deals either completed or pending this year, only one has come from CSFB's client relationships, and that was simply to act as adviser and offer support in the equity market, and the client was Swiss Ciba Specialty Chemicals. UK M&A mandates have been more evenly split.
A bizarre story surrounds the $3.73 billion flotation in June of engineering firm Alstom, a joint venture between GEC and Alcatel. BZW had won the mandate to advise GEC in January (Goldman Sachs advised Alcatel), and saw it as a vote of confidence in the old merchant bank. GEC's executives then told the combined CSFB-BZW that they wanted only BZW staff working on the deal until the ex-UK sales force of CSFB was needed to place the shares.