Two extraordinary M&A deals, Elon Musk’s hostile acquisition of Twitter, announced in April 2022, and UBS’s rescue takeover of Credit Suisse in March 2023, bookended the toughest 12 months for investment banking since the global financial crisis 15 years ago.
These are the transactions that bankers and corporate executives will still be talking about many years from now. Books will be written about them, plays maybe. Morgan Stanley took a lead role on both and is the world’s best investment bank in 2023.
It advised Musk, a private individual first taking an activist position then pivoting to an unsolicited bid, in the fourth-largest take-private deal ever. The $41 billion takeover is a defining transaction for social media.
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“Twitter was epic M&A,” says an investment banker at another firm.
