A surge in M&A announcements, worth roughly U S$1.2trn, in the fourth quarter, boosted 2016 M&A deal volumes and made it the third best year on record, according to Thomson Reuters. Global announced M&As cracked US $1trn for the first time last year in the fourth quarter thanks to companies like AT&T which announced a US $107bn acquisition of Time Warner.
Including AT&T, seven of the year's 10 biggest transactions were also announced during the fourth quarter. Despite the flurry of big deals late in the year, however, the number of deals above US $5bn was down 30% at 101, compared to 130 in 2015. The value of announced global M&A deals in 2016 was down 16% from a year earlier. But while the value of deals was down, as the number of mega deals fell, the total number of deals was up 1% at 46,055 world-wide.
Goldman Sachs continued its run as the number one adviser on announced deals, followed by rivals Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Citigroup. The rankings were unchanged from 2015. More boutiques managed to crack the top 25 after winning the sizable mandates in 2016, including Perella Weinberg Partners which was 15 on the list up from 39 the prior year and Qatalyst Partners, coming in at 19 up from 55 in 2015. They joined Evercore, Centerview, and Guggenheim.
According to estimates from Thomson Reuters/Freeman Consulting, M&A advisory fees from completed transactions fell 3% to US $30bn during the full year 2016. Fees from completed deals in the Americas totaled US $20.7bn, down 5.5%, while estimated fees on EMEA deals were US $12.5bn, up 2.6% from 2015.
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