GlobalCapital reveals winners of its 2023 Equity and M&A Awards

GlobalCapital is pleased to present the winners of its Equity Capital Markets and Mergers and Acquisitions Awards for EMEA, highlighting the banks and companies that demonstrated consistency, innovation and determination to execute deals in tough market conditions.

2023 was another tough year for ECM, with suppressed deal activity and a downturn in fees across the street.

With the exception of the Middle East, the region’s IPO market remained largely shuttered, apart from landmark transactions such as the flotation of Schott Pharma. An outsized share of the EMEA ECM volume was jumbo block trades in large cap stocks such as Heineken, Haleon and London Stock Exchange Group.

There were few large rights issues and the convertible bond market was quiet, too, despite rising interest rates and rallying equities creating favourable market conditions for equity-linked issuance.

Europe, the Middle East and Africa endured a testing time for mergers and acquisitions in 2023, when volumes hit cyclical lows with a sharp fall especially in headline-grabbing jumbo transactions.

But industries continued to consolidate, particularly financial services, where a US banking crisis spurred landmark transactions in Europe, while opportunistic buyers took advantage of lower valuations, often turning to innovative sources of financing.

For banks' M&A teams, it was a time to stay close to clients and demonstrate the depth of their coverage models and industry expertise as they sought solutions to an increasingly complex array of problems.

Against such a tough backdrop, it is important to recognise the investment banking teams which delivered for their clients and excelled amid intense competition for a smaller number of transactions, as well as celebrating the deals which shone through.

GlobalCapital's ECM Awards, running in their present form since 2015, are the only bespoke Awards dedicated to equity capital markets in EMEA, where they commend innovation and excellence. For the first time this year, we have also added six categories recognising excellence in M&A.

The Awards for Banks of the Year and Deals of the Year have been decided by GlobalCapital’s editorial team, based on our knowledge of the market and research, including pitches and written submissions from banks.

GlobalCapital would like to thank everyone who took the time to contribute to the Awards through pitch interviews. Our congratulations go to all our winners. The full list is below.

ECM Award Winners

M&A Award Winners