Although 2001 was a busy year in the Irish merger and acquisitions market, activity fell from the record highs of 2000 and the largest deal of 2001, Valentia’s E3 billion takeover of eircom, was almost seven times larger than the second largest, Irish Life & Permanent’s acquisition of TSB Bank which was valued at 4430 million.
However in a poll of the top deals of 2001, Ireland’s top plcs selected IL&P’s acquisition of TSB Bank as their most admired deal. This is the first ever mergers and acquisitions survey carried out in Ireland by Finance involving both the corporate finance community and Ireland’s top plcs.
Corporate finance advisors were asked to nominate three deals that they have worked on in the period February 28th, 2001- February 28th, 2002 and these nominations were then sent out to the top plcs to select their three most admired deals.
The plcs were asked to select their top deals on the basis of strategic fit, perception of the quality of deal making (including corporate finance advice), financing and benefit of the acquisition to the acquirer. The corporate finance advisers then profiled each of the deals they nominated, and we publish those profiles in the form of an M&A deal directory over the next few pages.
The list of nominations is published below and serves as an index for the deal directory that follows. Deals are listed by acquirer and in order of size.
Corporate finance participants are:
John Dillon, associate director, KPMG Corporate Finance, Mon O’Driscoll managing director, AIB Corporate Finance, Mark McComish, manager, CFM Capital, Louis O’Neill, senior manager corporate finance, BDO Simpson Xavier, Brian O’Kelly, head of corporate finance, Goodbody Stockbrokers, Fergus McLoughlin, director, NCB Corporate Finance, Leo Casey, manager, IBI Corporate Finance, Pat Landy, managing director, Merrion Corporate Finance, Brian Evans, lead M&A partner, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Ivan Murphy, director corporate finance, Davy Corporate Finance. |
