BDO Corporate Finance Retains Top Spot in the Mid-Market Audit and Advisory Space for the Third Consecutive Year

BDO South Africa’s Corporate Finance team led by Director, Nick Lazanakis, retained the top spot as the leading mid-market M&A Adviser within the Audit and Advisory space per the 2015 DealMakers' League Table for the third consecutive year, measured in terms of Deal Flow.

‘We have consistently ranked as the leading mid-market audit and advisory firm based on deal flow,’ says Lazanakis. ‘We always measure ourselves in terms of deal flow and not deal value as your Anheuser-Bush InBev/ SABMiller type mega-deals are the domain of the large investment banks. We are very pleased to once again achieve this ranking.’

The BDO team worked on 12 M&A deals in 2015 ranking 6th overall while in 2014, BDO advised on 16 deals. Even though the number of deals advised on in 2015 was lower, BDO achieved a higher ranking than in 2014, where BDO came in 7th overall. This is indicative of the overall trend where 2015 saw a total of 483 deals compared to 506 deals in 2014 (a declining trend continuing from 2007, where 696 deals were announced).

‘One trend to look out for in 2016 is an increase in divestment amongst our multinational clients. Potentially large exits by multinationals particularly in the energy and security industries are on the cards driven largely by the volatile Rand, legislative uncertainly and political risk,’ continues Lazanakis. ‘The AB InBev/SAB Miller deal was the winning deal in 2015 and dwarfed the size of the next largest deals and any deals in recent years. This was a mega-deal by any measure (at $106 bn) but the size (in local terms) was compounded by the sharp depreciation in the Rand. Any comparison of deal value year-on-year would need to take account of this transaction. Excluding the AB InBev/SAB Miller transaction, deal value for the year was way down, declining from R503 billion in 2014 to R394 billion. We expect another challenging year in 2016 due to the poor economic outlook and are expecting to focus on more recapitalisations, restructurings and turnarounds. 2015 was a prelude to this, the private equity deal of the year was the sale of Plumblink by Ethos to Bidvest. What made this deal unique was that the company was acquired at the top of the cycle and exited at the bottom of the cycle but was successful due to the significant restructuring of its business and route to market’ “We are proud to have again achieved leading performances within our industry in the 2015 league tables and are committed to using our competitive experience to the benefit of our clients,” concluded Lazanakis.