The biggest loser from AT&T's plan to buy Time Warner may not be another telecom or media rival. It could be investment banking giant Goldman Sachs.
Was reading this article which said that Goldman has been left out of the mega deal that has been recently announced. I thought that GS's TMT division was one of the best in its league. What could have possibly gone wrong here?
Not sure if this is a troll post but I'll answer anyway.
Yes, GS TMT is regarded as one of the best tech groups on the street, but there are 2 reasons why they aren't on every big TMT deal.
There are several other elite TMT groups. Among the bulges, MS and GS are essentially "equal." And at the boutique level you have Allen & Co, Qatalyst, Evercore, LionTree, etc. There is a substantial amount of parity.
Banking is all about relationships. The CEO and CFO of Time Warner don't decide they want to sell and say "hmmmm...GS TMT is pretty hot on WSO, let's hire them." No, they hire bankers that they have relationships with, typically one's who have run successful deals in the past for them. Time Warner and Allen have had a long-standing relationship, as does AT&T with its advisers. And it's not as if companies necessarily work exclusively with a certain bank (usually) and tend to split the deals up with banks who cover them.
Hope that helps.
This is the correct answer.
No one cares about league tables and rankings like WSO does. When a company decides to use a bank, they look at who they have a relationship with. This is why you will sometimes see MMs beat out BBs in bakeoffs. Naturally, companies will tend to have relationships with top banks for the simple fact that top banks usually have top MDs and top MDs usually spend a lot of time building their book of business, so it would only reason that a large company has a good relationship with a top bank.
One thing to point out is that some companies just do not do business with certain banks. My employer will never use a certain BB because my employer had a terrible experience with them several decades ago. So, when we raise capital, look at acquisitions, etc., the first question we ask is "Is this BB on the deal?". If so, we exit the process.
EDIT: Just to point something out, if you are wondering why certain banks are on a deal, look at the bankers at these banks. Allen & Co, PWP, etc. are obviously dwarfed by BBs, but their MDs are all industry veterans. No one hires Allen & Co., PWP, etc. for their balance sheets, but for their MD expertise. So, if you have an MD with decades of BB experience now working at PWP, you will see PWP included on more deals relevant to that MD's background. This is why smaller banks work so hard to poach MDs from top banks.
Allen & Co has best TMT practice on street. they were lead banker for time warner. that's why.
Where do you come up with this stuff lol?
They were going to go with GS, but once they heard that Blankfein lost the WSO poll of CEOs users would most like to have coffee with, they ditched that idea.