The unveiling of Legal Week‘s ‘lead adviser’ M&A league table last week confirmed what many will have suspected all along – that the grip held by the magic circle on the top end of the European M&A market is almost as firm as ever.
The research collated the lead advisory roles on Europe’s top 200 deals last year and, sure enough, those longtime sparring partners Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Linklaters straddled the top of the table, each leading on one in five of Europe’s largest deals. It was ever thus. No doubt if a similar exercise were carried out for 1995, this pairing would still top the table, but with a crucial difference – 10 years ago these firms’ dominance would have been tempered by the fact that their expansion into Europe had only just begun.
