Good evening,

A flurry of megadeals state-side has led to a global pick-up in M&A activity after a tough 2023 – but for bankers Down Under, the rebound is still waiting in the wings.

Dealogic data shows a steady first quarter for M&A volumes at $US17 billion – a slight increase on Q1 2022 volumes, but a 37 per cent slump on this time last year when the Newcrest-Newmont deal hogged the spotlight.

That’s not to say big deals didn’t hit the headlines, with the crown going to Saint-Gobain’s $4.3 billion bid for building materials giant CSR. Speak to any banker and they’ll say activity is picking up compared to last year, with deals like Seven Group’s bid to buy Boral, Cyan Renewables run at MMA Offshore and Metcash’s $600 million bet on Superior Food Services. However, deal values and the number of deals were down. It just takes one blockbuster deal to distort the numbers, and in this quarter, there wasn’t one.

CSR boss Julie Coates took advice from the company’s long-time banker, Greg Peirce, who co-heads global M&A at UBS, helping the Swiss bank into the top spot (see chart below). Barclay’s strategic partner Barrenjoey landed a spot advising Saint-Gobain’s bid alongside Lazard, taking out second place.

It was a good quarter for Bank of America, which nabbed roles on the second and third-largest deals – Alcoa’s $3.3 billion bid for Australian partner Alumina and South32’s sale of its Illawarra Metallurgical Coal business to Golden Energy Resources and M Resources for a cool $US1.65 billion ($2.5 billion). The South32 board had Melbourne-based Flagstaff Partners in its corner.

Bankers who spoke to Street Talk posited that Australia is missing out on the global M&A rebound due to the composition of the market – tending towards defensive stocks rather than cyclicality and growth. Blockbuster offshore deals include Synopsys’ $35 billion deal to acquire rival Ansys and oil producer Diamondback Energy’s $26 billion deal with Endeavour Energy. But local bankers are still hard at work, pushing hard to get deals across the line in the face of mediocre bonuses.

Read the full story tomorrow and more on the Street Talk page.

• Bidder field narrows for Whitehaven’s sell-down at Blackwater coal mine
• National Group flirts with US high-yield bond market amid sale, refi
• Bombora-backed IPO hopeful LVX Global enters administration
• M&A hungry Australian Wealth Advisors Group beefs up board

• Hillhouse Capital plots Australian outpost, snares ex-Blackstone exec
• Christopher Pyne emerges as Hanwha’s man in Canberra
• Online retailer Mytheresa among suitors for Yoox Net-a-Porter,Financial Times reports
• Entertainment giant Endeavor Group agrees to $US13 billion buyout from Silver Lake, Bloomberg reports
• Silicon Valley chipmaker Cerebras Systems taps Citigroup for IPO, Bloomberg reports

Click here for the latest equity market wrap.