Awards for Excellence 2017
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