Australian dealmaking is heating up.

And Australia’s Big 3 firms still have a chokehold on the Mergermarket leaderboard — HSF Kramer, Allens and KWM.

Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer topped value charts with over $60bn in deals, according to Mergermarket. That’s a 117% jump from last year.

Hot on its heels was Allens, surging from 4th to 2nd with $50bn+ in deal value — a whopping 342% lift.

Allens’ alliance partner Linklaters claimed third place with over $40bn in deal value.

The common thread for their rise? Abu Dhabi’s National Oil Company’s $36bn bid for Santos.

King & Wood Mallesons took the fourth spot with $28.8bn in value while Ashurst rounded out the top five ($15.6bn), just ahead of Gilbert + Tobin ($12.9bn).

Clayton Utz made a jump too, from 20th to 8th, off the back of its role advising VOC Group on selling its 25% stake in Rhodes Ridge to Mitsui for US$3.2bn.

KWM took the #1 spot on deal count, advising on 53 transactions, up 17 last year.

Allens and MinterEllison tied for second (37 each), followed by HSF Kramer and Hamilton Locke (34 each).

Thomson Geer tumbled from 1^st to 7^th, while HWL Ebsworth and Baker McKenzie made gains.

Here’s how the firms stack up:

While deal flow is down from the post-COVID boom, the top-end deals are still swinging.

Here are the three that moved the rankings:

The UAE state’s oil giant is gunning for Aussie gas.

In June of this year, ADNOC lobbed a $36bn all-cash bid for Santos, marking one of the largest foreign takeover offers in Australian history. That’s a 28% premium to Santos’ last closing price before the NBIO was announced.

Santos called in Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer. ADNOC’s consortium is repped by the Allens-Linklaters' power couple, pairing Linklaters’ global deal team with Allens’ local Aussie expertise.

The Consortium is not the first bidder for the South Australian gas giant. Woodside and Santos previously tried their luck at a $80bn merger. Talks were suddenly called off when both sides became unconvinced that shareholders would see value in the deal.

The deal’s not without hurdles. FIRB will have a say, with political scrutiny mounting over foreign control of energy assets.

Still, Santos has backed the offer. And for HSF Kramer and Allens, it carries a lot of weight to their rankings — 60% for HSF Kramer, 72% for Allens.

After 56 years, the cross-shareholding is finally over.

Since 1969, Soul Patts held 43% of Brickworks. Brickworks held 26% of Soul Patts. In June, the pair announced a $14bn merger to untangle the relationship and form a single ASX-listed entity.

Ashurst advised Soul Patts, with partner Bruce Macdonald leading the team. KWM acted for Brickworks, with partners David Friedlander, Judith Taylor, Robert Kelly and Daniel Natale on point.

The structure was anything but simple: two inter-conditional schemes, one for each company, with a new holding company created to sit above both. The deal also included a $550m capital raise to give the merged group firepower from day one.

The result? Two legacy structures, folded into one streamlined operation.

One of the longest-running takeover tussles in recent memory has finally landed. What started as a quiet $2.7bn buyout bid in December turned into a full-blown brawl.

Insignia Financial has now accepted a $4.80 per share offer from US private equity firm CC Capital, ending a saga that saw Bain Capital walk and Brookfield briefly enter the ring. Insignia, once trading at a heavy discount to book value, had been fending off bidders since December.

Bain Capital was first in, but CC Capital soon followed, with rumours swirling that they had a genuine offer up their sleeve. Then Brookfield jumped in, tapping Gilbert + Tobin to back its tilt. Mercer was even said to be circling if a breakup was on the cards.

Insignia had a clear favourite. CC Capital pledged to keep management, while Bain Capital was tipped to carve it up. That, and a tumbling market, saw Bain walk, blaming volatility as shares slid below $4, despite the $5 NBIOs issued by CC Capital and Bain Capital.

CC Capital is repped by Ashurst, led by Anton Harris and Will Mason. Insignia turned to KWM, who stuck with the wealth manager through every twist — from Bain Capital’s $4 opening shot, to the final $5 bids, and the eventual fallback to $4.80. Peter Stirling and Genovieve Lajeunesse led KWM’s team.

The drawn-out drama may not have thrilled investors, but for Ashurst and KWM, the $3.3bn deal delivers a dynamic boost to the league tables.

We’re working on a deep dive on the deal directly to your inbox.

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