BoAML tops India M&A fee ranking for Jan-March

Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BoAML) has topped the merger and acquisition advisory fee ranking table in India for the first three months of 2014 with a market share of almost one-third.

BoAML earned $15.9 million (about Rs 100 crore) as fees from two deals during the quarter through March, according to data from Thomson Reuters and Freeman Consulting. The investment bank got $5.5 million as fee in a deal that involved state-run ONGC Videsh and Oil India buying Videocon Industries' stake in a Mozambique gas field for $2.475 billion. It also earned $10.38 million for helping ONGC Videsh to acquire a stake in Rovuma offshore field in Mozambique from Anadarko Petroleum for $2.64 billion.

The two deals pushed the total M&A advisory fee in India by 51% from a year earlier to $49.8 million during the January-March period. The top 10 investment banks accounted for $45.84 million, or 92.1%, of this amount.
 
The value of inbound deals - foreign companies acquiring Indian firms - dropped by half to $1.4 billion while the amount of outbound transactions jumped 57% to $497.6 million during the quarter. M&A activity within the country doubled to $2.7 billion from $1.3 billion a year earlier, the data showed.

While the combined deal value increased a tad from year-earlier levels, the number of deals dropped nearly 30% to 232 from 329 in the first quarter of 2013. Also, the M&A deal value during January-March fell 27% from the October-December period. M&A activity could get a boost, however, if a stable government comes to power after the April-May general elections.