Bankers Share $175 Million for Starring Role in Disney-Fox Deal
Bankers Share $175 Million for Starring Role in Disney-Fox Deal
(Bloomberg) -- Wall Street banks including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. are poised to share the year’s third-biggest pot of fees for working on Walt Disney Co.’s $52.4 billion deal for 21st Century Fox Inc.’s movie and cable assets.
The deal could yield as much as $175 million in fees split between five banks advising on the transaction, according to estimates from Jeff Nassof, a director at Freeman Consulting Services. Centerview Partners LLC and Deutsche Bank AG joined Goldman Sachs in advising Fox, while JPMorgan and Guggenheim Partners LLC counseled Disney, according to people familiar with the matter.
Bankers acting for Fox can expect to rake in as much as $85 million in fees, while Disney’s advisers are set to share as much as $70 million. Goldman Sachs could snag an additional $20 million for promising a short-term loan to fund the new entity that will house the remaining Fox assets.
Only two deals this year have yielded a bigger payday: CVS Health Corp.’s $67.5 billion purchase of health insurer Aetna Inc. and United Technologies Corp.’s $23 billion acquisition of Rockwell Collins Inc., the Freeman estimates show.
The deal catapults Centerview Partners into the No. 10 spot on the 2017 mergers and acquisitions league table, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, bumping fellow boutique adviser Evercore Inc. out of the top 10. Goldman Sachs, which led the transaction for Fox and provided a $9 billion bridge loan to the company, is the No. 1 M&A adviser this year, followed by Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan.
Guggenheim rose to the top 15 in M&A rankings on the back of the deal, the Bloomberg data show. The firm’s executive chairman Alan Schwartz has had a decades-long relationship with Disney Chief Executive Officer Robert Iger, who’s on track for his largest ever takeover. Guggenheim was in the No. 35 spot before the deal was announced on Thursday.
Cravath Swaine & Moore LLP provided legal advice to Disney, while Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLP, Hogan Lovells LLP and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP acted for Fox.
To contact the reporters on this story: Nabila Ahmed in New York at nahmed54@bloomberg.net, Sonali Basak in New York at sbasak7@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Elizabeth Fournier at efournier5@bloomberg.net, Michael J. Moore at mmoore55@bloomberg.net, Devin Banerjee
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