GlobalData : Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs were top M&A financial advisers by value and volume in North America for Q1–Q3 2020

27 Oct 2020
Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs were top M&A financial advisers by value and volume in North America for Q1-Q3 2020 Posted in Business Fundamentals

Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs were the top mergers and acquisitions (M&A) financial advisers in North America for Q1-Q3 2020 by value and volume, respectively. A total of 8,898 M&A deals were announced in North America during the period, according to GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

According to GlobalData's M&A report, 'Global & North America M&A Review & Financial Adviser League tables', there was a 16.3% decrease over 10,631 deals that were announced during Q1-Q3 2019. Deal value also decreased by 35.1% from $1,182bn in Q1-Q3 2019 to US$767bn in Q1-Q3 2020.

In GlobalData's ranking, Morgan Stanley gained top spot in terms of deal value by advising on 84 deals worth $184bn, which was the highest among all the advisers. Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs led in volume terms and also occupied the second position by value having advised on 119 deals worth $178.3bn.

Aurojyoti Bose, Lead Analyst at GlobalData, comments: 'Goldman Sachs, which was the only adviser to advise on more than 100 deals during Q1-Q3 2020, lost the top position to Morgan Stanley in terms of value.

'In contrast, Morgan Stanley advised on relatively fewer but big-ticket deals, which helped it top the list by value. Moreover, while Morgan Stanley's average deal size stood at $2.2bn, it was $1.5bn for Goldman Sachs.'

JP Morgan occupied third position by value with 84 deals worth $165bn, followed by Bank of America with 78 deals worth $113.9bn and Credit Suisse with 51 deals worth $103.3bn.

Evercore occupied the second position by volume with 86 deals worth $82.2bn, followed by Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan.

Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs were also the top advisers by value and volume in the US - the key market for North America. National Bank of Canada was the top adviser in Canada by deal value as well as volume.