Bankers and lawyers are chasing more business from cash-rich private equity clients
Dealmakers at Rothschild, Goldman Sachs, Kirkland & Ellis and Linklaters dominate a list of the top advisers to private equity companies in Europe at a time when bankers and lawyers are chasing more business from these cash-rich clients.
Anthony Gutman, the co-head of UK investment banking at Goldman, worked on more investment banking deals involving buyout firms than any other banker in Europe, the Middle East and Africa in the 12 months to June 30, according to data from MergerLinks.
Gutman’s key private equity deals over the period included Bain Capital’s £1.2bn bid for UK insurer Esure and the sale of ZPG, the owner of property website Zoopla, to PSP Investments for £2.5bn.
Gutman was followed in the rankings by a trio of dealmakers from Rothschild, the independent investment bank that primarily works on mid-market transactions. Laurent Baril was the most active Rothschild dealmaker over the period.
Owain Evans, a managing director at Goldman focused on UK deals, also featured in MergerLinks’ top 10. Goldman has been pushing for more private equity deals and has bolstered its team in London with the recruitment of Melissa Plaza-Marriott and Mahir Zaimoglu in recent months.
Banks and lawyers are competing for business from private equity firms, which are looking for ways to spend huge capital reserves; as of July, there was more than $2tn in so-called dry powder yet to be deployed by the industry, according to Preqin data.
MergerLinks was set up in 2017 by Bartosz Jaskula, a former Rothschild banker, and provides rankings of executives working on deals worth more than £100m. The 10 busiest bankers and lawyers in private equity are listed below.
Top 10 bankers in private equity
1) Anthony Gutman, Goldman Sachs
Number of deals: 4
Value: £8.9bn
2) Laurent Baril, Rothschild
Number of deals: 4
Value: £4bn
3) Dominic Hollamby, Rothschild
Number of deals: 3
Value: £11.1bn
4) Majid Ishaq, Rothschild
Number of deals: 3
Value: £7.3bn
5) Geoffrey Iles, Bank of America
Number of deals: 3
Value: £7.1bn
6) Cathal Deasy, Credit Suisse
Number of deals: 2
Value: £9bn
7) Dirk Pahlke, Rothschild
Number of deals: 2
Value: £7.5bn
8) Anthony Parsons, HSBC
Number of deals: 2
Value: £6.9bn
9) Owain Evans, Goldman Sachs
Number of deals: 2
Value: £5.6bn
10) Joe Hannon, Credit Suisse
Number of deals: 2
Value: £5.6bn
Top 10 lawyers in private equity
1) Thomas Forschbach, Latham & Watkins
Number of deals: 5
Value: £4.8bn
2) Ben Leyendecker, Kirkland & Ellis
Number of deals: 4
Value: £14bn
3) Neel Sachdev, Kirkland & Ellis
Number of deals: 4
Value: £13.2bn
4) David Higgins, Kirkland & Ellis
Number of deals: 4
Value: £9.9bn
5) Mavnick Nerwal, Linklaters
Number of deals: 4
Value: £6.5bn
6) Tim Rennie, Ashurst
Number of deals: 3
Value: £11.7bn
7) Norbert Schneider, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer
Number of deals: 3
Value: £11.4bn
8) Marco Compagnoni, Weil Gotshal & Manges
Number of deals: 3
Value: £10.7bn
9) David Martin, Linklaters
Number of deals: 3
Value: £10.3bn
10) Jessamy Gallagher, Linklaters
Number of deals: 3
Value: £7bn
Source: Financial News