Morgan Stanley’s defence of ScottishPower in its £11.6 billion takeover by Iberdrola has swiftly catapulted the American investment bank to the top of the 2006 European mergers and acquisitions league tables, with only four weeks of the year left to run.
Previously standing third, it has now leapt over Citigroup and JPMorgan, having advised on announced deals worth $472.7 billion (£242 billion), according to data from Thomson Financial. Citigroup has advised on $461.2 billion of transactions, with JPMorgan’s tally at $449.5 billion. Goldman Sachs, with $409.9 billion, lies an unexpected fourth.
That performance marks an eleventh-hour comeback for Morgan Stanley, whose league-table standing had previously been hampered by the fact that it has been “conflicted” out of two of this year’s biggest M&A transactions. It had been precluded from participating in the €37 billion takeover of Endesa, of Spain, by E.ON, the German power utility, by virtue of a previous relationship with Iberdrola. If the original bid for Endesa from Gas Natural had succeeded, Morgan Stanley would have advised Iberdrola on the purchase of assets that Gas would have been compelled to sell for regulatory reasons.
Similarly, Morgan could not join the fee bonanza represented by the €66 billion merger of San Paolo IMI, of Italy, with Banca Intesa due to ties to Crédit Agricole, an 18 per cent shareholder in Intesa.
Morgan’s previous biggest coup this year had been acting for Arcelor in its three-month defence against a €32 billion bid from Mittal Steel. Its bounce back comes after the bank was written off by rivals at the start of the year after losing teams of corporate financiers to Lehman Brothers and Perella Weinberg, the boutique founded by Joseph Perella, a former Morgan Stanley star.