Awards for Excellence 2017
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Cheap financing helped big M&A deals continue to proliferate in Europe over the period of these awards. Western Europe’s best bank for advisory, UBS, has experience of the pinnacle of the trend for Chinese M&A in Europe, acting on the Swiss side of ChemChina’s $50 billion takeover of Syngenta, which was reaching closure at the end of the awards period. The bank’s work also included a defence against a less attractive offer by Monsanto.
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| Severin Brizay, UBS |
But the ChemChina/Syngenta deal was not the only one of extraordinary size in which UBS, led by European M&A head Severin Brizay, was involved. The awards period saw Softbank’s $31.6 billion recommended cash offer for ARM Holdings, in which UBS acted as adviser and corporate broker to ARM.
UBS also advised Vodafone on the $21 billion merger of its Dutch branch with Ziggo, having also advised the UK telecoms firm on the merger between its Indian arm and Idea Cellular, for $24.2 billion.
Other multi-billion dollar deals advised by UBS include the $2.5 billion sale in Poland of Bank Pekao to PZU and PFR as part of wider work on the restructuring of UniCredit.
It also acted as exclusive financial adviser in the merger between Raiffeisen Bank International and Raiffeisen Zentralbank Osterreich and was sole financial adviser and offer manager to China’s HNA on its $1.7 billion public tender offer for travel services firm gategroup in Switzerland.
In the UK, UBS acted as financial adviser, joint corporate broker and joint sponsor to J Sainsbury on its recommended offer for Home Retail Group.
