Lazard sets sights on Swiss advisory spoils

Lazard is planning to take on Switzerland’s biggest banks and other top merger and acquisitions advisers after opening its first office in the country as part of its push to grow its European business.


The new office in Zurich expands Lazard's network in Europe, alongside existing offices in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden, to eight countries.

The creation of the office comes less than a year after Lazard won its first European advisory mandate from Nestlé, the world's biggest food company. In December Lazard worked on Nestlé's $2.5bn (€1.8bn) purchase of a business from Novartis, the Swiss drug maker. Lazard reprised its relationship with Nestlé four months later on a second, larger deal.

Lazard said the launch of the office will allow it to “expand our financial advisory services to the Swiss market, where we already have established corporate relationships”. The move comes less than a week after the bank recruited the chairman of European investment banking at UBS and one of the Swiss bank’s former top dealmakers, Ken Costa, as chairman of its cross-border business.

Lazard has hired Rolf Bachmann from consultancy McKinsey & Co as a managing director to run its Swiss investment banking business. Bachmann will report to Antonio Weiss, a vice chairman of European investment banking, and further hires to the Swiss office are in the pipeline.

The bank ranked 14th among advisers on Swiss M&A deals last year, when deal volumes hit a record $83.2bn, according to investment banking research company Thomson Financial.

The group, run by Bruce Wasserstein, has climbed to sixth in the Swiss advisory rankings so far this year, claiming a 12.1% market share, although that is less than half the share boasted by the top three advisers: Credit Suisse with 37.5%; Goldman Sachs with 32.2%; and UBS with 28.7%.

In June, Lazard signed a co-operation agreement with Raiffeisen Investment, the M&A advisory arm of Austria’s biggest banking group, on M&A deals in Russia and across central and eastern Europe.
Source: efinancialnews.com