The Venture Intelligence Blog

Morgan Stanley , which advised the $10.1 Billion strategic investment by Facebook and Google into Reliance Industries' telecom arm Jio platforms (among other Private Equity investments in the company), topped the Venture Intelligence League Table for Transaction Advisor to M&A Deals for 2020. Ambit Corporate Finance - which advised 3 deals worth $4.0 Billion, including Brookfield's $3.7 Billion acquisition of Reliance Tower Infrastructure Trust -  took the second spot. JM Financial ($3.7 Billion across 5 deals), Metta Capital ($3.4 Billion across 3 deals) and ICICI Securities ($3.4 Billion across 2 deals) - all of whom (along with Citi) are advisors to the $3.4 Billion acquisition of Future Group's retail related ventures by Reliance Retail, announced in August - completed the top five. The  Venture Intelligence League Tables , the first such initiative exclusively tracking transactions involving India-based companies, are based on the value of PE and M&A tra...

Ernst & Young and Unitus Capital topped the Venture Intelligence India League Tables for the Most Active Transaction Advisors to Private Equity deals during the six months ended June 2013. Unitus was the financial advisor to as many as nine PE transactions during the period (earning 34 League Table credit points), while E&Y was the financial advisor to three PE transactions (with 12 points). Including Due Diligence, Taxation and other advisory services, E&Y advised as many as 26 PE transactions (earning 36 points). E&Y was also the financial advisor to six M&A transactions during H1’13 (earning 22 points) and as many as 26 M&A transactions (earning it a total of 42 points) if other advisory services were to be included. The Venture Intelligence League Tables, the first such initiative exclusively tracking transactions involving India-based companies, are based on volume of PE and M&A transactions advised by Transaction and Legal Advisory firms. ...

Business Today has a cover story on the phenomenon. Among the "bigger boutiques", Veda Corporate Advisors, set up by C. Venkat Subramanyam and M. Vinod Kumar, who have been together for 20 years, through three jobs and two entrepreneurial ventures, has 20 people. Jacob Mathew, M. Ramprasad and Ajay Garg left DSP Merrill Lynch to start MAPE Advisory, which has 38 people. And Equirus, which came into existence when Garg left MAPE to start his own outfit, has 40, half of them in investment banking and the other half in institutional equity ...In fact, boutiques are the ones really active in the ring right now, feasting on deals of Rs 50 crore to Rs 200 crore, which is the range where the action is. They charge the same percentage as fee that the big ones do, but get by happily in spite of the low absolute amount, a result of the smaller deal sizes, because their expenses are far lower. ...It is not just the lower expenses that make boutiques click with clients. All six that BT ...

From the Economic Times article : These are the ones who left the suffocating process-driven culture at giant firms, such as Morgan, Merrill and Goldman. They build relationships with entrepreneurs for years and get to experiment with ideas. Know them, identify what they want, comfort them and say they could be a lot bigger than they are, with a banker's advice. Boutique banks, such as MAPE, Collins Stewart Inga , Spark Capital and RippleWave Equity are thriving in a market where mergers and acquisitions last year doubled. Some successful boutique firms such as Avendus Capital and Edelweiss are expanding into full-service financial firms taking their expertise to public markets such as initial public offerings. "Our approach is not transaction oriented but relationship oriented," said Jacob Mathew, managing director at MAPE Advisory. "We keep going back to clients with ideas. We compete with top bankers with large balance sheets but we don't want to become large ...