In 2021, Sullivan & Cromwell continued to be a leader in the global M&A financial advisory space, advising on deals valued at over $300 billion. Since 2016, S&C has counseled financial advisers on nearly 300 M&A transactions totaling $1.3 trillion in deal value.
The Firm advised BofA Securities, Barclays, Centerview Partners, Credit Suisse, Evercore, FT Partners, Goldman Sachs, Guggenheim, Houlihan Lokey, J.P. Morgan, Lazard, LionTree, Morgan Stanley, Nomura Securities and Rothschild & Co during 2021 in their capacity as financial advisers in, among others, the following M&A matters:
- Grab Holdings in its $39.6 billion merger with Altimeter Growth, which resulted in Grab Holdings going public in the U.S., becoming the largest-ever U.S. equity offering by a Southeast Asian company, and the $4 billion PIPE in connection with the merger
- Lionheart Acquisition Corp. II, a SPAC, in its pending merger with MSP Recovery. Upon closing, the combined company will be valued at approximately $32.6 billion, becoming one of the largest SPAC transactions ever
- Gores Guggenheim, a SPAC formed by The Gores Group and Guggenheim Capital, in its $20 billion pending merger with Polestar Performance
- McAfee in its $14 billion pending acquisition by an investor group led by Advent International and others
- Reinvent Technology Partners Y, a SPAC, in its $13 billion merger with Aurora Innovation and related $1 billion PIPE investment
- Atlantia in the pending €9 billion sale of its entire stake in Autostrade per L’Italia to a consortium consisting of CDP Equity, The Blackstone Group International Partners and Macquarie European Infrastructure Fund 6 SCSp
- The conflicts committee of Apollo’s board in connection with Apollo’s $11 billion merger with Athene
- Emerson in its definitive agreement with AspenTech to create a diversified, high-performance industrial software leader for $11 billion
- Webster Financial in its $10.3 billion pending merger of equals with Sterling Bancorp
- Brookfield Property Partners’ special committee in connection with Brookfield Asset Management’s $6.5 billion acquisition of the limited partnership units of BPY
- eBay in its $3.8 billion sale of its businesses in Korea to Emart
- Allianz in its €2.5 billion purchase of the life and non-life insurance operations, as well as pension and asset management business, from Aviva Group, and acquisitions of a majority stake in Aviva’s life and non-life bancassurance joint ventures with Santander, setting Allianz to become the fifth largest insurer in Poland
- Vine Energy’s Board of Directors in its $2.2 billion acquisition by Chesapeake Energy Corporation
S&C partners involved in M&A financial adviser matters in 2021 included Stephen Kotran, Nikolaos Andronikos (London), Carsten Berrar (Frankfurt), Catherine Clarkin, Krystian Czerniecki (Frankfurt), Mitch Eitel, Jared Fishman, Matthew Goodman, Eric Krautheimer (Los Angeles), Rita-Anne O’Neill (Los Angeles), Keith Pagnani, Alison Ressler (Los Angeles), Stephen Salley, John Savva (Palo Alto), Melissa Sawyer, Matthew Schwartz and Konstantin Technau (Frankfurt).