PHILADELPHIA, May 9, 2017: Morgan Lewis has received top rankings from several publications in mergers and acquisitions league tables in the first quarter of 2017, continuing its rise as one of the world’s go-to firms for legal services in corporate and business transactions. The firm also placed highly in recently released full-year 2016 rankings for private equity deals and shareholder activism defense.
The firm was ranked third for US middle-market M&A deals in the Bloomberg ranking, and fourth in announced US deals of any value both in Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters.
Globally, Bloomberg ranked Morgan Lewis third in middle-market M&A deals and fifth in announced global deals of any value. Middle-market deals are those valued up to $500 million.
“This rise to the top five of the M&A league tables is a continuation of our upward trend in recent years,” said Morgan Lewis partner Charles E. Engros, who leads the firm’s corporate and business transactions practice.
Morgan Lewis also received high rankings in private equity deals, with Pitchbook placing it as the fourth most active firm in the United States and seventh most active globally in private equity deals of any size for full-year 2016. By industry, Morgan Lewis was ranked fifth in business-to-consumer deals, seventh in business-to-business deals, eighth in technology transactions, and tenth in healthcare and life sciences industry transactions. By region, the firm was ranked as the second most active in the US mid-Atlantic, while receiving a seventh-place ranking by type of deal in buyouts and an eighth-place ranking in the “other deals” category.
Morgan Lewis was also ranked at the top for its shareholder activism practice, where it placed third among all law firms for its shareholder activism defense in the recently published 2016 Global Shareholder Activism Scorecard compiled by Reuters.
Meanwhile, Morgan Lewis was named as the second-highest ranking legal adviser last year for shareholder activism defense under FactSet SharkRepellent’s 2016 Shareholder Activism Review, and Activist Insight, a leading UK-based resource on global shareholder activism. The rankings were based on the number of publicly disclosed activism-defense cases where Morgan Lewis provided lead advice.
“Our practice group is having a very strong year, and that is due to the tremendous work and proactivity of all of our lawyers,” Mr. Engros said.