News
Freshfields ranks first for European M&A advisory
- Freshfields named leading legal advisor in Europe, advising on 181 M&A deals valued at $206bn (Mergermarket);
- Freshfields secured the number one spot in the UK and Germany (Mergermarket) and Spain (Mergermarket; Bloomberg; Refinitiv).
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer (‘Freshfields’) has ranked first for European M&A by deal value*, marking seven years in a row** that the firm has held its top position.
Against a turbulent deal climate, where Europe M&A activity declined by 39 per cent during 2022 compared to the previous year, Freshfields was the leading legal advisor in the region, advising on 181 M&A deals valued at $206bn (Mergermarket).
Refinitiv credited Deutsche Telekom’s €10.7bn sale of GD Towers to Brookfield Asset Management Inc and DigitalBridge as the top deal that Freshfields advised on. Freshfields’ market-leading transactional advisory work in 2022 also included acting as independent counsel to Haleon plc on its £30.8bn demerger from GSK plc, the second highest valued deal in Europe (Mergermarket).
Freshfields’ head of global transactions, Julian Pritchard, said: “We are pleased to see such strong results once again that demonstrate our cross-border teams’ delivery of excellent client service. With equity sentiment starting to return to neutral and clients becoming increasingly able to assess the impact of the current macro situation on valuations we would expect some normalisation of deal markets in 2023 compared to the challenging H2 of 2022.”
Andrew Hutchings, head of Freshfields’ London transactional practice, commented: “We expect a combination of more strategic M&A and collaboration arrangements for corporates, financial sponsor activity to increase as funding availability comes back as well as deals in some sectors resulting from distress.”
Freshfields’ placed second in the global cross-border tables by Refinitiv, with $114bn in overall deal value. Freshfields’ 2022 activity by sectors saw financials, healthcare, industrials, high technology, and telecommunications rank as the top five for deal value.
The firm placed sixth and eighth by Bloomberg and Mergermarket respectively for global M&A by deal value, with its leading positions in Europe and Asia spurred on by acting on U.S. transactions totalling $138.8bn during the year (Mergermarket).
Ends
Notes to editors
- *Data for FY22 results according to Bloomberg, Refinitiv and MergerMarket.
- **Data for seven consecutive years according to MergerMarket.
- Freshfields placed first in the UK and Germany deal rankings (Mergermarket), and first across all three publications for Spain (Mergermarket; Bloomberg; and Refinitiv).
- In Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan), Freshfields ranked in second place advising on 32 deals with APAC involvement, and a value of $84.8bn (Mergermarket).
- Globally, the firm ranked sixth by deal value (Bloomberg), and as eighth legal advisor by Mergermarket, which credited the firm for 237 deals worth $360bn, of which $73bn were deals with a private equity aspect.
