Fiat and Peugeot Turn to Small Advisory Firms for Huge Car Deal
Fiat and Peugeot Turn to Small Advisory Firms for Huge Car Deal
(Bloomberg) -- When PSA Group and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV pursued Europe’s biggest merger of the year, they turned in large measure to small advisory firms.
PSA worked with French boutique Messier Maris & Associés, while its board was advised by Perella Weinberg Partners and the Peugeot family by Zaoui & Co. Fiat used d’Angelin & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the sole Wall Street bank in a leading role. The carmaker’s largest shareholder, Exor NV, chose Lazard Ltd. Morgan Stanley said it also advised PSA in an analyst note.
Those firms are now poised to split as much as $90 million in advisory fees, according to estimates from Freeman & Co. The deal underlines the increasing trend of big companies leaning on smaller firms for advice when there’s no financing required from large corporate lenders.
Three of the advisers would be considered mini-boutiques. Paris-based Messier Maris & Associés, set up in 2010 by ex-Lazard bankers Jean-Marie Messier and Erik Maris, has only five partners. Italian bank Mediobanca SpA bought a controlling stake in the firm this year.
Zaoui, which has advised the Peugeot family on several transactions, was created by brothers Michael and Yoel Zaoui, both former bulge-bracket M&A bankers. Benoit d’Angelin, the ex-Lehman Brothers banker who founded the namesake firm in 2016 in London, is behind the almost 20-person shop that advised Fiat. Those are the smaller versions of larger, global boutiques like Perella Weinberg, which has been expanding in France, and Lazard, which has a long history in the country.
By combining, Fiat Chrysler and PSA -- the maker of Peugeot and Citroen vehicles -- would create a regional powerhouse to challenge Volkswagen AG. The tie-up would bring together the billionaire Agnelli clan in Italy and the Peugeot family of France as consolidation sweeps through an industry trying to finance major transformation.
--With assistance from Michael Hytha.
To contact the reporter on this story: Aaron Kirchfeld in London at akirchfeld@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Daniel Hauck at dhauck1@bloomberg.net, Aaron Kirchfeld, Frank Connelly
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