A rich day for banks advising on mergers

On one day alone, Goldman Sachs has helped shepherd roughly $100 billion worth of merger deals.

The investment bank was one of only three financial advisors on Royal Dutch Shell's nearly $70-billion acquisition of the BG Group, and is leading Mylan's $29 billion unsolicited takeover bid for the Irish drug maker Perrigo.

It's a stellar day for any bank and firmly cements Goldman's lead atop the rankings of merger advisors. The Shell deal also provides a big lift to the other firms that worked on the transaction, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and the British boutique Robey Warshaw.

The acquisition of the BG Group in particular - the biggest deal so far this year - will bolster the fortunes of the three firms involved. It is the third-biggest energy transaction of all time, according to Thomson Reuters, after the original merger of Royal Dutch Petroleum and Shell Transport and Trading as well as the combination of Exxon and Mobil.

All three investment banks involved stand to gain a windfall if the deal closes. According to estimates from Thomson Reuters and Freeman Consulting, Bank of America could earn about $82 million for advising Shell, while Goldman and Robey Warshaw could each earn about $50.3 million.

Goldman had already been doing well this year, having ranked first in overall mergers advisory with 95 deals worth $207.1 billion in the first quarter, according to Thomson Reuters. As of Wednesday, the firm can now claim $305.8 billion worth of advisory assignments.

(Another beneficiary of the flurry of deal-making on Wednesday is the law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore, which is advising both Shell and Mylan. Working alongside the firm on the Shell transaction are Slaughter & May of Britain and De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek of the Netherlands; the British firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer is counselling the BG Group.)

Bank of America will leap to second place in overall mergers advisory, with $207.2 billion worth of transactions, up from fourth place in the first quarter. That puts it ahead of rival JPMorgan Chase, which was duelling with Goldman for the top spot last week.

And Robey Warshaw - formed last year by Simon Robey, a former top Morgan Stanley banker, and Simon Warshaw, a onetime co-head of investment banking at UBS - will rocket up the league tables. The firm did not even make the top 25 for the first quarter.

But as of Wednesday, it now ranks eighth, with $80.5 billion, ahead of bigger rivals like UBS and Barclays and smaller ones like Greenhill & Company.

The BG transaction will also drastically shake up the ranking of advisors on energy deals, at a time when mergers in the oil patch have slowed down as petroleum prices have dropped. None of the firms on the Shell-BG Group deal made the top three of Thomson Reuters' ranking of energy and power deal advisors for the first quarter this year. Instead, the pack was led by Citigroup, with two deals worth $22.9 billion; Barclays, with three deals worth $19.5 billion; and JPMorgan Chase, with five deals worth $18.8 billion.

In one fell swoop, Bank of America will also take the lead spot for energy deal advisers, with $84 billion worth of transactions. Goldman will take second place, with $82 billion, slightly edging out Robey Warshaw.

Advising Shell will help Bank of America in other ways as well. The firm is offering a bridge loan to Shell to help pay for the deal and will serve as lead arranger for the financing.

Mylan's bid for Perrigo will propel Goldman into the top three advisers on health care deals, with $46.9 billion worth of transactions. That will still put the firm behind JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley, which is advising Perrigo.

If completed, the takeover offer would be the fourth-biggest announced this year, according to Thomson Reuters, coming behind the BG Group sale, the merger of H.J. Heinz and the Kraft Foods Group, and Cheung Kong Holdings' takeover of Hutchison Whampoa.

©2015 The New York Times News Service