by Jonathan Brown
| Caspar Hobbs | ||||||
When it comes to mergers and acquisitions, getting the right adviser can be of paramount importance for any company at a crucial moment in its history. Consequently, tables released by data providers, such as Thomson Financial and Computasoft Research, can play a major role in making a selection. It might be expected that the field would not be too contentious - after all, the figures must surely speak for themselves. But a little controversy has now been injected into the mix, thanks to a comparative newcomer in the M&A league table business.
That new player is mergermarket.com and the controversy surrounds the company's decision to expand on the usual list of league table services by publishing tables ranking the named individuals at each advisory firm who are actually doing the deals.
The latest league tables from Thomson Financial show Goldman Sachs leading the way, with Morgan Stanley Dean Witter following, both by value and number of deals for the first 10 months of this year.