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As we saw last week, the big Street firms at the top of the table are beginning to get a little crowded by sector-focused boutiques. This is particularly true for firms that specialize in sectors with healthy dealflow -- middle-market companies focused on energy and raw materials, to name one prominent example.
The trend held up this week, with Tristone Capital Inc. adding one new client to take "sole possession" of fourth place. But from the looks of it, boutiques aren't the only ones getting in on the action. J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. had an active week on both ends of the auction timeline, and both times with energy deals in the middle market: The bank was hired by Navasota Holdings Texas Partners to sell its natural gas-fired plants and advised Valero Energy Corp. on the sale of its 85,000 barrel-per-day refinery in Krotz Springs, La., to the U.S. subsidiary of Alon Israel Oil Co. Ltd., for $333 million. CIBC World Markets Inc. is also getting involved, this week inking livestock nutrition company Ridley Inc. as a new client. CIBC is also shopping West Energy Ltd., which it added in April. Even UBS, making its debut this week, does so by virtue of a new middle-market client (Centerplate Inc. has a market cap around $100 million). - Nathaniel Baker
About this List Several times a week or more, there is news about a company hiring an investment bank "to explore strategic alternatives." Sometimes the phrase "including a sale" or "including a possible sale" is tacked on at the end of the statement. Other times the company is less obvious about its want/need to unload assets. In merger arbitrage land, the news triggers a set of Pavlovian responses, usually taking the form of a series of questions: What company did this? Why? Was it due to activist pressure? Earnings disappointments? A combination? More importantly, should we long this stock? If not, do we get in now? Who might buy? How likely is this to happen? Do we short them? Poor arbs. It is said their lives are nothing but long stretches of boredom interspersed with moments of stark panic. (Or maybe that was pilots?) Private equity firms flush with cash will of course take interest for a different reason -- as a potential bidder for some of the companies' assets, or perhaps even for the companies themselves. Lost in all this is the business done by the advisory firm that was hired to conduct the review. Just who are these guys, and how much business are they doing? This blog series was born of an attempt to answer this question and shed some light on this niche of the investment banking world. The below chart is a stab at putting it all into context. To narrow the scope somewhat, we have limited the data to new auctions announced during the 2008 calendar year. Unlike "traditional" league tables, which usually attempt to track revenues, this table is ordered by the number of new clients signed year-to-date by a particular firm. (Not all companies identify the firm they hired to conduct their review, though The Deal reporters are often able to dig this information up through sources. Still, the table will by definition be incomplete for this reason.) Categories Deal Video
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