Mergermarket’s 2016 M&A trend report and legal advisor league tables have been published and they confirm that Matheson’s Corporate M&A Group had a very strong year in 2016.
Matheson achieved:
- a 64% increase in total deal value as against 2015, with deal value totalling in excess of $36.5 billion in 2016; and
- a deal volume of 32 deals, which was a 14% increase on Matheson’s 2015 deal volume.
This increase in Matheson’s deal volume contrasts sharply with the overall reduction by 27.5% of the number of Irish transactions credited to all firms in 2016, as against 2015.
During 2016, Matheson advised on complex cross-border and domestic corporate transactions in a wide variety of industry sectors including Pharmaceuticals, Financial Services, Hotels, Energy and Food and Beverages. Some of the highlight transactions included:
- advising Worldview Capital Management on its successful hostile takeover of Petroceltic International plc, an Irish registered and headquartered company. This was the first successful hostile takeover of an Irish listed plc and was achieved using an innovative strategy that combined the use of traditional takeover tactics and the Irish examinership process;
- advising Aviva in relation to the sale of Aviva Life International Limited, which has circa €1.5bn of assets under management, to Harcourt Life Assurance Company Limited; and
- advising Irving Oil (which operates Canada’s largest oil refinery) on its acquisition from Phillips 66 of Ireland’s only oil refinery at Whitegate in Cork, which supplies up to 40% of the refined oil products in the Irish market.
This continues Matheson’s established track record of advising on the most high profile international M&A transactions.
Commenting on the results of the report, Tim Scanlon, Head of Corporate in Matheson said,
“2016 was an extremely positive year for Matheson’s Corporate team. Our rankings demonstrate the strength of our offering across a range of industry sectors and corporate practice areas. The increase in our deal volume is particularly striking, in the context of the overall reduction in the number of deals which took place in Ireland last year.”
