Awards for Excellence 2019
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The M&A business has been another bright spot for European investment banks over the past year. Western Europe’s best bank for advisory, Credit Suisse, has made particularly good use of that opportunity under investment banking and capital markets chief executive Jim Amine.
After climbing back into Dealogic’s top 10 M&A advisers in western Europe during Euromoney’s previous awards period, the firm continued to ascend, becoming the top Europe-based adviser by volumes.
In international M&A deals Credit Suisse has been able to make good use of its cross-border presence and its particular advantages in European markets such as Italy. Its relationships and expertise in working for private equity clients has also served it well at a time when these firms have such good access to equity and debt funding.
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Jim Amine |
This was a year when the big deals in which it played a central advisory role came to fruition; notably the $66 billion Bayer acquisition of Monsanto and Atlantia’s €16.5 billion acquisition of Abertis Infraestructuras.
Credit Suisse advised the German and Italian sides of these deals, respectively. It also advised KKR on the acquisition of Unilever’s spreads business for €8.25 billion, completing in July 2018.
Later in the awards period, the activity continued, as the bank stayed on top of the key trends, including carve-outs and public-to-private deals. It advised Switzerland’s ABB on the $11 billion sale of its Power Grids business to Hitachi in December.
In March it advised UK satellite company Inmarsat on its $6.1 billion public-to-private acquisition by a consortium consisting of private equity and Canadian pension funds.
