Awards for Excellence
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| © 2017 Euromoney |
| Full results |
Whatever clients need to do, it is a fair bet that Morgan Stanley can help them do it. The firm’s business this year in North America was no exception, and while from a league table perspective it is in M&A advisory that Morgan Stanley truly excels, its innovation and skill in all areas make it our choice for best investment bank in the US. Morgan Stanley likes uncertain markets more than some – it reckons volatile conditions are when it can best show its prowess. Nowhere was this shown better than in the unregistered block trade that the bank executed on behalf of Abbott Laboratories, which wanted to sell 44 million shares of Mylan in what was the second largest unregistered block ever.
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Colm Kelleher, president, Morgan Stanley |
The timing was tough, the markets were jittery ahead of a potential House of Representatives vote on the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, but the $1.88 billion monetization was successfully wrapped up by Morgan Stanley in a sole broker-dealer role. Other highlights in ECM include its lead left role on the $3.9 billion IPO of Snap, leveraging the firm’s enviable technology sector franchise. Morgan Stanley has long had expertise in this area and it secured a substantially bigger underwriting position on the deal than any other firm on the trade.
The quality of its institutional reach was demonstrated by a $2.2 billion follow-on offering for The Williams Companies, with the firm wall-crossing more than 20 accounts on the day of the deal and enabling the completion of a complex restructuring of the issuer’s relationship with Williams Partners, its consolidated master limited partnership.
In DCM, the firm’s emphasis is on coming up with nimble strategies that make the best use of its wide distribution reach – both institutional and retail.
It was on the key investment-grade deals of the year, including AT&T’s $10 billion six-tranche bond that attracted orders of $27 billion and Abbott’s own $15.1 billion six-trancher that capped a sequence that has seen the firm act as active bookrunner on all of the borrower’s financings.
It also helped non-US corporates tap dollars, acting as active bookrunner on the debut bond for Shire plc, a $12.1 billion four-tranche deal that was the fifth largest European corporate bond deal at the time. The deal was to take out a bridge for the company’s acquisition of Baxalta, for which Morgan Stanley advised Shire as well as part-underwriting the bridge and acting as Shire’s corporate broker.
It was in the non-investment grade market that the firm had one of its most notable achievements, however. The awards period saw Morgan Stanley work on its largest ever lead left term loan B, a $5.5 billion loan for Avolon to support its acquisition of CIT Commercial Air. The firm was also joint global coordinator and joint physical bookrunner for the borrower’s $3 billion of senior notes.
Behind much of the bank’s capital markets work lies its storied M&A advisory franchise – it considers its entire investment banking offering to be advisory-led. Recent years have seen it develop an area of increasing importance – defence advisory, against both rival corporates and activist investors. A notable mandate in the awards period was the bank’s successful defence of Unilever against an unsolicited offer from Kraft Heinz. It also secured a vastly improved offer for Axiall from Westlake Chemical, which upped its initial bid by 65% before the initially hostile offer was agreed.
