That puts around $4 billion of clear blue water between it and the other Morgan, JPMorgan, which is second. Moreover, its tally doesn’t include the $2.1 billion megamerger in India between Birla-Tata and BPL’s cellular networks, orchestrated by Morgan Stanley. That’s because the deal was between two private companies and under Thomson Securities Data’s rules, only publicly verifiable transactions sizes can count towards league table credits.
What makes Morgan Stanley’s achievement all the more interesting, however, is the fact that having lost the supremely important DBS relationship to Goldman Sachs, it has still managed to get on the opposite side of DBS-related transactions, and thus get league table position.
In DBS’s acquisition of Dao Heng in Hong Kong, it advised the selling Guoco Group, and obtained a very healthy (some would say incredibly healthy) price of 3.3 time book for the seller.
And when Goldman lauched DBS’s hostile bid for OUB, it ended up working for OUB on its defence and quickly put together an alternative (some would say white knight) bid from UOB.
Indeed, the Singapore franchise really struck gold for Morgan in the first half. It advised SingTel on its $10 billion bid for Optus and also advised Omni on its sale to Celestica for $880 million.
“Singapore has been a great strength for us this year,” says M&A boss, Harry Van Dyke. “Our market share in Singapore M&A has been 76% by volume.”
Indeed, of Morgan’s $27 billion tally, around $20 billion of that comes from three deals, all of which originate from the Lion City.
As for the rest of Asia (excepting Australia), Morgan has had a quieter time. Although, says Van Dyke, “I predict a couple of deals may come out of Korea in the second half.” There has been a drought of Korean deals this year. One such deal – that has been pending for three years – is the sale of Daewoo Motors. Morgan Stanley, and Lazard, have been advising Daewoo Motor and its creditors, Chohung Bank and KEB on the sale.
Says a modest Van Dyke: “We’ve been lucky enough to work on all the big deals this year. We’ve been in the right place at the right time.”
