Biglaw

What Biglaw M&A Practice Is Already Killing It In 2018?

The rest of the market seems to be doing well too.

By  
on

Winter has overstayed its welcome this year, so you may not have clocked it, but we are already well into April. With a full fourth of 2018 already in the can, it’s time to see just how well firms did in Q1. Bloomberg’s law firm league table for global mergers & acquisitions deal volume tracks just which firms are getting the lion’s share of the work, and the firm at the very top of the list is extending the lead it picked up in 2017.

Skadden Arps has had the biggest 2018 so far, with 46 deals representing $169 billion in deal volume. Next comes Paul Weiss with 37 deals representing $117 billion, followed by Wachtell with 14 deals representing $97 billion. We should note, these numbers only include the work done for the corporations buying a target or selling to a buyer — no credit is given for a firm that just advised a bank or investment firm in those transactions.

Stephen Arcano, head of Skadden’s M&A group, had predicted a strong start to 2018 for the firm way back in January. In a statement to Bloomberg, he seemed excited his forecasting panned out:

“The M&A market has been robust so far this year, though there is risk that deal activity could be negatively impacted going forward by rising interest rates or disruption in the capital markets, as well as evolving regulatory and trade policies,” he said via email.

Yes, this passes as excited in the M&A world.

The rest of the market seems to be doing well too. Overall global M&A deal volume is up over the number for Q1 2017 by ~25 percent, for a grand total of $936.8 billion.

Sponsored

headshotKathryn Rubino is an editor at Above the Law. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

Sponsored

Topics

, , , , ,