Merger and acquisition activity in the Asia-Pacific continued to slow during the first six months of this year, as deal volume dropped to its lowest level in three years.
According to reports published by Bloomberg LP, Thomson Reuters and Mergermarket, deal volume in Asia fell sharply compared to the previous two years.
Rankings by the three organizations, which use different methodologies, did not produce a consensus on a single law firm that advised the most M&A deals by value in the past six months. Simpson Thacher & Bartlett topped Bloomberg's list with $24.3 billion in M&A deal volume in the Asia Pacific, excluding Japan. The New York firm was followed by China's Fangda Partners, Clifford Chance and Korea's Kim & Chang, all totaling more than $20 billion worth of deals in the first half of 2017.
Herbert Smith Freehills won the top spot on Thomson Reuters' ranking with $22.7 billion, and Clifford Chance followed with $21.5 billion. King & Wood Mallesons kept its top ranking from a year earlier on Mergermarket's report with $29.5 billion worth of deals; Clifford Chance and Fangda followed, with each handling deals valued at close to $22 billion.
In 2016, Bloomberg ranked Simpson Thacher as the top M&A legal advisor in the Asia Pacific, excluding Japan, for the first six months, with $71.6 billion. Davis Polk & Wardwell and White & Case led the rankings for Thomson Reuters and Mergermarket in the same period, with $65.8 billion and $66.5 billion, respectively. A significant portion of these firms' deal volume came from a single deal: China National Chemical Corp.'s $46.3 billion acquisition of Swiss agribusiness company Syngenta A.G.
The big-ticket deals of the first half of 2017 dropped even further when compared to the same period of 2015, when no single deal tilted the the balance. That year, top M&A advisors Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom ( by Bloomberg ) and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer (By Thomson Reuters and Mergermarket) handled deals worth $95 billion and more than $120 billion, respectively.
Despite using different methodologies, all three organizations found M&A volume across the Asia Pacific during the first half of 2017 to be the lowest since the same period of 2014. Year on year, the total value of M&A deals in the Asia Pacific recorded by Bloomberg dropped 34 percent to $406.8 billion from $612.2 billion; Thomson Reuters recorded a 19 percent year-on-year decrease in total M&A volume, while Mergermarket reported a 15 percent fall.