Amarchand Mangaldas maintained its lead as closer of the biggest M&A deals year-round while AZB & Partners replaced three-time leader Desai & Diwanji in closing the maximum number of M&As, according to data provider Mergermarket’s standings for 2013.
Deal counts set new records while deal sizes didn’t reflect the count, indicating that all firms are taking the middling deal route to bring in the dough.
Big pie, small slices
Deals sizes were smaller in 2013, with Amarchand’s 38 deals worth only $10bn – half the total value of 39 deals last year, and AZB’s spike of 19 deals since last year docketing lesser overall deal value than in 2012 ($3.3bn from 45 deals as compared to $4.7bn from 26 in 2012).
AZB’s overall deal value from 2013 is almost one-fourth of its 2011 figure – 31 deals worth $11bn.
AZB had docketed 21 deals and come up at the top of the league table by volume, by half-year, but the firm had dropped off the charts for the biggest deals. It recovered three places since then to take the third spot in the annual rankings.
Deal wise
The biggest deals for Amarchand this year were the $2.4bn Ambuja-Holcim merger, the $2.5bn Apollo-Cooper acquisition and the $2.475bn sale by Videocon of its stake in a Mozambique gas field.
Talwar Thakore & Associates (TTA), which acted on the biggest India-deal this year - Unilever’s $3.5bn buy in Hindustan Unilever – held fort since H1, on second place on the deal value rankings this year.
Khaitan & Co made a significant jump since H1, just about managing to climb onto the mixed rankings for Indian and foreign firms by deal value. It rose from 16 deals worth $938m since H1 to 27 reported deals worth $2.25bn by year-end, rising three places to take fourth spot among Indian law firms.
Q1 strong players DSK Legal and Platinum Partners were lodged after Khaitan on the value rankings. Both had acted on the largest transaction in the Pharma, Medical & Biotech (PMB) space this year - Mylan’s $1.6bn purchase of Agila Specialties.
Count wise
AZB, which was the annual leader by volume, acted on nine times more deals than the law firms figuring on the last three rungs of the 15-firm strong league table. Talwar Thakore & Associates, S&R Associates and Wadia Ghandy reported only five M&As – the lowest among the top 15.
The order remained the same for the top seven firms since H1 – Khaitan, Desai & Diwanji, Trilegal, JSA and Tatva Legal followed AZB and Amarchand.
Sectoral trends
The PMB sector in the Asia pacific region reported 38 deals worth $4.2bn – reflecting a 188.4% increase from 2012 (US$ 1.4bn, 30 deals) with eight more deal announcements. This represents a second consecutive annual rise by both value and volume, according to Mergermarket’s analysis.
However this includes deals on which foreign firms also acted. On the mixed rankings, Amarchand is separated from runners up TTA by the four-pack: Simmons & Simmons, Jones Day, Davis Polk & Wardwell and Linklaters. Slaughter & May and White & Case precede AZB, while a host of foreign firms are lodged before the 15th ranking Khaitan & Co.
Private equity buyers acquired 19 firms in transactions totalling $0.7bn in 2013, representing the most deals and the highest value on Mergermarket record for PEs since 2001, added the report.
Legal Adviser League Table by Value - 2013
| ### Rank | ### Law firm | ### Value ($m) | ### Deal Count |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Amarchand Mangaldas | 10,149 | 38 |
| 2 | Talwar Thakore & Associates | 3,601 | 5 |
| 3 | AZB & Partners | 3,305 | 45 |
| 4 | Khaitan & Co | 2,246 | 27 |
| 5 | DSK Legal | 1,674 | 6 |
| 6 | Platinum Partners | 1,670 | 3 |
| 7 | S&R Associates | 1,479 | 5 |
| 8 | Kochhar & Co | 990 | 1 |
| 9 | Trilegal | 697 | 22 |
| 10 | J Sagar Associates | 693 | 17 |
| 11 | Vaish Associates | 627 | 6 |
| 12 | Desai & Diwanji | 617 | 24 |
| 13= | Economic Laws Practice | 379 | 1 |
| 13= | Gagrats | 379 | 1 |
| 13= | Harish Salve | 379 | 1 |
Legal Adviser League Table by Volume - 2013
| ### Rank | ### Law firm | ### Value ($m) | ### Deal Count |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | AZB & Partners | 3,305 | 45 |
| 2 | Amarchand | 10,149 | 38 |
| 3 | Khaitan & Co | 2,246 | 27 |
| 4 | Desai & Diwanji | 617 | 24 |
| 5 | Trilegal | 697 | 22 |
| 6 | J Sagar Associates | 693 | 17 |
| 7 | Tatva Legal | 219 | 13 |
| 8 | Nishith Desai Associates | 115 | 8 |
| 9 | Rajani, Singhania & Partners | 298 | 7 |
| 10 | DSK Legal | 1,674 | 6 |
| 11 | Vaish Associates | 627 | 6 |
| 12 | Luthra & Luthra Law Offices | 325 | 6 |
| 13 | Talwar Thakore & Associates | 3,601 | 5 |
| 14 | S&R Associates | 1,479 | 5 |
| 15 | Wadia Ghandy & Co | 359 | 5 |
Source: mergermarket
Comments
I think we've covered every single M&A deal that Luthra has done this year. But even if we hadn't, I believe the law firms also send the same press releases and deal lists to mergermarket and those guys directly, who will pick up the deals even if we have never written about them...
[/quote]
Ha ha ha. ROFL. Too good, Kian.
What is lexygen?
M&A comes directly under Mohit Saraf, doesn't it? He called this a 'good' year?
I can understand that Amarchand, TTA, AZB, Khaitan, DSK, Platinum, S&R, Trilegal, JSA are better firms (no surprises here).
But even Kochhar, Vaish, Desai Diwanji, ELP, Gagrats, Tatva, Rajani, NDA are far better than Luthra!
17 firms are ahead of Luthra. That's not a Tier 1 or Tier 2 performance but a Tier 3 at best performance by Luthra.
Clearly, the internal 'restructuring' Saraf described was done of the wrong people, and should be of the common denominator between then and now.
Check all Luthra related articles over the past two years and you will be in a position to ascertain for yourself. Good luck and i you do end up there.... well... happy sailing!
http://www.legallyindia.com/201304253632/Corporate-/-MA/jet-etihad-harish-salve-elp-amarchand
which put him the league tables in an earlier quarter too:
http://www.legallyindia.com/201307113819/Corporate-/-MA/azb-drops-off-mna-values-league-table-despite-21-deals-in-kitty
At family or one person dominating firm you can not utter a single word...Still JSA is far better than all those sad places...Open and completely fair...This ranking really matter for firm but for Individual associates what matter is good work, good behaviour and a nice compensation that's all man, No one want to take out your dynasty man...Grow up
Hopefully this trend will continue.
Do create an account, with a disposable email address if you must, and your name will be reserved, you get to bypass the moderation queue and lots more.
And you'll only need to log on once and it should remember you. Can do it on your phone if worried about your work machine...
And if you're worried about privacy, we'll know no more about you if you're signed in than we know now, if you use an anon email address.
Just sayin'.
You can also pick a Scootery display pic if you like, for even more entertainment value ( http://www.legallyindia.com/Community ). (And you could write blogs / rants, apply for jobs (we wouldn't know that the applications came from Scooter's account), post on our forum, etc. etc.
If you have any other perks you'd like, please do let me know and I'll see if we can make it happen.
Happy commenting,
Kian
I am the real scooter! whatever that is worth!
When he used "Scooter," he did think of his own name. So what if you happen to use the same name too.
Kian - how many more partners and fee earners do AZB and AMSS have compared to TTA, S&R and WG? Would be interesting to see the average deal per fee earner for firms rather than an absolute number (although this is also an interesting indication). These tables show that small firms that focus on quality like TTA, S&R and Platinum are making an impact way above what their small size would suggest.
As a bit of friendly advice, it would help if you send your submissions to Mergermarket rather than LI. And also focus on attention to detail (such as reading before commenting) - clients do like that sort of thing every so often, and it might also help your firm get listed on deal tables.
Cheerfully yours, small law firm
I said much of the same in 1.2.1 above. In fact, if I remember rightly, I think I have an unpublished column lying around about the rankings that I'll try to dig out and put up...
http://www.legallyindia.com/201402034307/Legal-opinions/law-firm-league-tables-explained
So no room for envy, jealousy, malice or pride...or danger of facing relegation a la L&L (yikes! ppl cld mistake it for LoL!! Ho Ho Ho)
I am content practising law under the rock where I live.
(And after reading of further blows to Ranbaxy yesterday, I wonder who were the worthies who did the DD and advised the hapless Japs and allowed the Singh duo to sell them a lemon...in any other jurisdiction where lawyers are meant to be professionals, they would have probably got their pants sued off for malpractice.)
It is not clear what kind of law you practice, but it is certainly clear that you don’t know what you are talking about although you have happily tendered your learned opinion. Fyi, Daiichi’s allegation is that Ranbaxy and its key promoters [u]concealed[/u] / [u]misrepresented[/u] critical information concerning investigations by the US Department of Justice and the US Food and Drug Administration, which investigations led to a regulatory fine and loss of goodwill. This is not something that the lawyers “[i]missed[/i]” in their diligence, but rather something that was [u]not[/u] disclosed by the seller to the buyer’s legal counsel and, possibly, not even to its own lawyers. Also, appreciate that a lot of contract terms in a deal are commercial i.e. drafted at the insistence of businessmen who want such terms to close the deal, even if their lawyers advice otherwise. Not to mention that you speak as if non-law firm practitioners jump to take full responsibility for their negligence, or for tendering opinions without analysis (like yours!).
Religare Capital Markets was the exclusive financial advisor to Ranbaxy while Vaish Associates was its legal advisor. Nomura Securities acted as the exclusive financial advisor for Daiichi, while Jones Day was the legal advisor outside India, and P&A Law Office was the legal advisor in India. Mehta Partners was its business advisor while Ernst & Young was the accounting and tax advisor.
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