Venture Intelligence has come out with its Private Equity (PE) and Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) league tables for the year 2011. Like last year, AZB & Partners has topped both PE and M&A league tables with a total of 73 deals.

Venture Intelligence exclusively tracks transactions involving India-based companies and is a leading source of information and analysis on Private Equity, Venture Capital and M&A in India. The Venture Intelligence rankings are based on number of transactions and number of credits.

Private Equity Deals

In PE transactions, AZB has been the most active legal advisor with 45 deals including big ticket deals like Hero Investments – GIC, Bain Capital and GVK Energy-Actis GIC.

Amarchand Mangaldas stands at second position in the PE table acting as an advisor in 44 deals including Soma Enterprise – JP Morgan and GMR Airport Holdings – SBI Macquarie.

The other law firms in the league table advising on PE transactions include IndusLaw (31), ALMT Legal (29), DSK Legal (18) and Trilegal (17). Last year, ALMT Legal and IndusLaw shared the second position with 19 deals each.

Most active Legal Advisors (Private Equity)

M&A Deals

Foreign companies acquired majority stakes in 131 Indian companies during 2011, registering a 30 percent rise in such transactions as compared to the previous year. Of these Inbounds deals, there were 65 deals with an announced value of $9.99 billion. In comparison, 2010 had witnessed a total of 101 inbound deals, of which, there were 50 transactions with announced values totaling almost $8.4 billion, according to the Venture Intelligence study.

Among M&A transactions, AZB tops the league table advising on 28 deals including advising on the largest Inbound M&A deal of 2011 wherein Vodafone bought out Essar Group’s stake in mobile phone services firm Vodafone Essar for $5.46 billion.

Khaitan & Co. stands at second position with 29 transactions including Patni – iGate deal and Welspun Corp – Apollo Management deal while Amarchand comes to a close third with 30 deals in hand.

The number of transactions has gone down for AZB. Last year, AZB advised on 47 deals while this year it advised only on 28 deals. Khaitan’s and Amarchand’s share of the M&A deal flow increased (in terms of volume) and Khaitan has jumped up to the second position from fourth position in 2010 while Amarchand has jumped up to the third position from fifth position in 2010.

Among the other law firms topping the M&A league table are J. Sagar Associates with 12 deals and Trilegal with 11 deals.

Most active Legal Advisors (M&A)

The volume of outbound deals – i.e., Indian companies acquiring overseas companies/assets - dipped by about 35 percent year-on-year to 127 deals in 2011 compared to 194 such transactions in the previous year. In the largest outbound deal, Mundra Port & SEZ acquired the Abbot Point Coal Terminal in Queensland, Australia for $2 billion.

Speaking to Bar & Bench Venture Intelligence CEO Arun Natarajan said, “Given how India remains among the very few countries that will witness significant economic growth over the next few years, we expect the momentum in inbound deals to continue into 2012. Outbound deals will probably remain flat in the first half of 2012 owing to t global economic uncertainties”.

A copy of PE and M&A league tables are available here.