Kirkland & Ellis tops M&A legal adviser rankings for first time

By Anirban Sen

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Kirkland & Ellis, the world's largest law firm by revenue, has for the first time ranked No. 1 in the league tables compiled by Dealogic and LSEG that track the volume of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) that are advised upon by lawyers.

Kirkland advised on transactions worth $406.4 billion globally in 2023, giving the firm a market share on that basis of roughly 13%, according to Dealogic.

Latham & Watkins and Sullivan & Cromwell ranked Nos. 2 and 3, respectively. Overall global M&A volumes came in at about $3.13 trillion, according to Dealogic.

Kirkland also topped the rankings for transactions in the U.S., the world's biggest M&A market.

"We have a very diverse practice by size of deal, by type of client, by industry, by geography, and that got borne out in our results this year," said Sarkis Jebejian, an M&A partner at Kirkland. "We advised on much bigger deals but if you look at the $5 billion-to-$15 billion sweet spot, we had really strong market share - and that's what drove it."

During the year, Kirkland advised on several large deals, including ONEOK's $19 billion acquisition of Magellan Midstream Partners, GTCR's $11.7 billion purchase of a 55% stake in Fidelity National Information Services unit Worldpay, and CVS Health's $10.6 billion takeover of Oak Street Health.

Over the past decade, Kirkland has strengthened its M&A and private equity advisory groups by hiring several top lawyers from rival law firms. Some of those key hires include Eric Schiele, a former partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore; David Klein, who joined Kirkland from Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison; and Edward Lee, a rainmaker who defected from Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz in 2020.

"That's the difference between having what we had 10 years ago and what we have now - back then, our public company M&A practice was a young practice that needed to be filled with external hiring," said Daniel Wolf, M&A partner at Kirkland. "And now we have a mature practice with a strong pipeline, which is producing people that are being promoted."

Winning the top spot is a coveted prize in the lucrative business of M&A advice for the burgeoning ranks of deal advisers, which include investment banks, white-shoe law firms, boutique advisory firms, and crisis communications firms. The league tables are monitored closely by these firms and are used as a marketing tool to win new business and hire and retain top-flight talent.

While the M&A advisory rankings for investment banks have been virtually unchanged, with Goldman Sachs ranking No. 1 nine times in the past 10 years, the battle for the top spot in the legal advisory league tables has been more open.

Sullivan & Cromwell topped the rankings four times in the last 10 years, while Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom was ranked No. 1 twice during that period.

(Reporting by Anirban Sen in New York; Editing by Matthew Lewis)