Awards for Excellence 2019
In a year of mega deals, one bank – and not the one most might have expected – stood out from the lot. That bank was Goldman Sachs, this year’s best bank for advisory in the Middle East.
It worked on $102 billion-worth of mergers and acquisitions, via 14 deals, putting it well ahead of the other global banks that shone over the past year in the region. Over the past five years, Goldman Sachs ranked fourth on average, making its performance over the past year all the more remarkable.
As adviser to Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), Goldman Sachs worked on Saudi Aramco’s $69 billion purchase, signed in March, of a 70% stake in Saudi Basic Industries Co from PIF. The agreement could vastly help PIF fund its efforts to diversify the Saudi economy away from oil, as laid out in the kingdom’s Vision 2030 programme.
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Wassim Younan |
That deal, the largest ever M&A transaction in the Middle East and North Africa – under the leadership of regional CEO Wassim Younan – would validate a whole year of business by itself.