Wall Street to Reap $316 Million From Day of Mega Deals

By Dinesh Nair and Aaron Kirchfeld

The five Wall Street banks that advised on $100 billion of takeovers announced yesterday by Halliburton Co. (HAL) and Actavis Plc could reap as much as $316 million in fees for their work.
Goldman Sachs (GS) Group Inc. and Bank of America Corp. will take home the lion’s share of that, with roles on both the $34.6 billion purchase of Baker Hughes Inc. by Halliburton, and the $66 billion acquisition of Allergan Inc. by Actavis Plc.
Goldman Sachs, based in New York, was the sole adviser to Baker Hughes, while Bank of America and Credit Suisse Group AG advised Halliburton. The three banks are set to receive as much as $143 million in total, Freeman & Co. said.
Halliburton, the second-biggest oilfield services provider, agreed to buy No. 3 Baker Hughes, taking advantage of plunging crude prices to set up the
biggest takeover of a U.S. energy company in three years. Actavis’s deal to acquire Allergan, meanwhile, will help the target rebuff a hostile approach from Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc.
Goldman Sachs and Bank of America were also advisers to Allergan, for which they may share as much as $92 million, according to Freeman. JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), meanwhile, may receive as much as $81 million as adviser to Actavis.
Yesterday’s deals firmed up Goldman Sachs’s status as the No. 1 adviser on M&A, with almost $814 billion of total value to its credit. Morgan Stanley (MS), which didn’t have a role on either of the two large deals, ranks second with $653 billion of deals to its credit.
Citigroup Inc., which also didn’t have a role on either deal, slipped a spot in the rankings to No. 4, while Bank of America rose to third from fifth. The ranking lists, called league-tables, are used by banks when they pitch their services to clients. A strong track record can help them convince companies to hire them as advisers.
“We are extremely proud of the performance and momentum of our M&A franchise and the strategic advice and solutions that we have delivered to our clients in 2014,” Citigroup spokesman Robert Julavits wrote in an e-mail yesterday.