The new year finds a new name atop the annual year-end lists of M&A legal advisers, with Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom topping three separate rankings of law firms based on the total value of their corporate clients’ M&A transactions in 2012.
The Skadden sweep—which the firm completed Friday when MergerMarket released its 2012 results [PDF]—comes a year after the firm placed third among M&A advisers ranked by Bloomberg, MergerMarket, and Thomson Reuters. As we reported last year, Sullivan & Cromwell, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, and Wachtell, Rosen, Lipton & Katz, in varying order, topped the 2011 rankings.
