Cravath Swaine & Moore and Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz are advising on Ripplewood’s $2.1bn (£1.1bn) bid for US manufacturer Maytag Corporation – as New York’s public M&A leaders continue to move into the surging leveraged buy-out (LBO) market.

US private equity house Ripplewood is leading an investor group consisting of RHJ International, GS Capital Partners and J Rothschild on the bid for Maytag, which produces well-known appliances including Hoover vacuums.