The Deal Announces Results of 2013 M&A League Tables

NEW YORK, March 6, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- The Deal, TheStreet's (NASDAQ:TST) institutional business, announced the results of their rankings of the top firms and professionals involved in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) for 2013. According to the data, last year's deal volume – 115 deals of $100 million or more – was on par with the annual average over the past decade, which suggests the sustainability of last year's numbers.

"M&A professionals have come to resign themselves to a halting, sputtering deal market since 2008, and many companies seem to be far more careful in their dealmaking and chary of large transactions than they were before the world almost fell apart that year," said David Marcus, Senior Writer for The Deal. "And yet, various sectors have reached new highs in deal activity, including oil and gas in 2011 and 2012 and real estate last year." 

League Table highlights:

• Top law firms included Kirkland & Ellis LLP with 89 total deals; Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP with 66; Latham & Watkins LLP with 60; Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP with 57 and Jones Day with 44.
• Top law firms representing investment advisers included White & Case LLP with 44 total deals; Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP with 20; Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP with 19 and both Alston & Bird LLP and Greenberg Traurig LLP with 17.
• Top Delaware law firms included Richards, Layton & Finger PA with 65 total deals; followed by Morris, Nichols, Arsht & Tunnell LLP with 47 total deals and Potter Anderson & Corroon LLP with 24 total deals.
• Top investment advisers included Goldman, Sachs & Co with 96 total deals; Bank of America Merrill Lynch with 80; JPMorgan Chase & Co. with 79; Barclays Capital with 71 and Morgan Stanley with 65.
• Top proxy solicitors/information agents included Georgeson Inc. with 44 total deals; Innisfree M&A Inc. with 37 total deals and MacKenzie Partners Inc. with 18 total deals.
• The top public relations firms were Joele Frank, Wilkinson Brimmer Katcher with 79 total deals; Sard Verbinnen & Co. with 60 and Abernathy MacGregor Group Inc. with 46 total deals.

The full report is available online.

About The Deal's M&A League Tables

Rankings include the names of lead M&A and/or corporate partners at law firms that represented the principals and investment advisers. Only deals involving a change of control of a target company with a market value of $100 million or more are included, and only when a key party involved is a U.S. company. Unless the target is a recognized stand-alone operating business, rankings will not include asset sales, unit sales, sales of subsidiaries, spin-offs or joint ventures. Deals with undisclosed transactions values are not eligible.

About The Deal

The Deal, a business unit of TheStreet, has been serving corporate dealmakers, advisers and institutional investors the most sophisticated analysis of the deal economy since 1999. Our transaction information service, The Deal Pipeline, is powered by a newsroom of senior journalists who offer proprietary research and reporting across M&A, bankruptcies, auctions and financings. It includes a breaking news service, First Take; daily and weekly sector newsletters; The Daily Deal, a 2x daily report of the day's top stories; a research center with over a decade's worth of intelligence and a database of over 100,000 deals; and an iPad & iPhone app. Our marketing & media services group produces the industry's leading forecasting event, The Deal Economy, held annually in New York City in addition to industry webcasts and integrated marketing programs. For more information, visit www.thedeal.com.

CONTACT:  
Emily Schneider  
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SOURCE TheStreet, Inc.