The Deal on Thursday, Sept. 23, announced the winners of its fourth annual Deal Awards program, honoring the top dealmakers in sector specialties as well as areas of dealmaking including restructuring, activism and private equity.

The 2021 Deal Awards honored deals and dealmakers for their work on transactions announced, completed or in flux during 2020. The Deal research team combed through thousands of transactions and hundreds of nominations to decide the top advisers and identify the deals that exemplified the biggest trends of the year.

For this year’s awards The Deal combined the middle market and more traditional large-cap New York ceremony into one live event, hosted at the JW Marriott Essex House in Manhattan.

Among the notable winners — T-Mobile US Inc.’s (TMUS) $26 billion megamerger with Sprint Corp. took home Deal of the Year in the large-cap category while a deal from Fox Corp. (FOX) to acquire Tubi Inc. took home our Deal of the Year in the middle market. SoftBank Group Corp.’s monetization of its stake in the combined T-Mobile entity was the Most Innovative Large-Cap Deal of the Year.

Sidley Austin LLP took home the Activist Defense Law Firm of the Year award while Kirkland & Ellis LLP and Cole Schotz PC were Debtor Counsel of the Year in the large-cap and middle-market segments, respectively.

On the dealmaker front, Kris S. Withrow, co-chair of Fenwick & West LLP’s M&A group, won middle-market Dealmaker of the Year, as well as middle-market TMT Dealmaker of the Year. Andrew J. Nussbaum of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz took home large-cap Dealmaker of the Year.