Marketing tombstone for unannounced transaction

Has anyone seen marketing tombstones for transactions that completed, but where the buyer and seller didn’t want to announce their names? For example, I-Bank XYZ acted as Financial Advisor for US-based PE fund in acquisition of EU-based Manufacturing co. for $150mil. Either on company websites, LinkedIn, pitch decks, etc.

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Yeah my group does this. And we’re one of the top banks in the industry we cover - not bragging, just pointing out that it’s not just random boutiques doing this, even top BBs are always trying to show their clients they’re actively in the market. The reason this is done is because if you’re pitching and the potential client sees you’re actively running another process, odds are you know who the interested buyers for that type of asset are.

 

No press release until the deal is announced. The tombstones we’re talking about here are just for the quals page in your pitch deck, where your bank lists a bunch of tombstones for deals they’ve worked on recently. I’m in oil and gas so to give an example of one I’ve seen, it might say “Permian Operator” in plain text instead of a company logo, “Exclusive Sell-Side Advisor” for role, and “Active” or “Ongoing” for the date. Once the deal actually closes of course you would update the tombstone to the real thing, but this is just something you would do when you’re pitching to win another deal and the MD wants to show they know these assets and who the potential buyers are because they’re actively in the market right now with a similar deal.

 

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