Rothschild seeks advisory work on bigger deals

By Mathieu Robbins

LONDON (Reuters) - Investment bank Rothschild ROT.UL plans to climb the mergers and acquisitions league tables by hiring more big hitters and boosting the size of the deals for which it works as an adviser, said a senior banker.

While Rothschild came ninth in Thomson Financial's European M&A announced deal volume rankings in the first nine months of 2006, the bank topped the league tables for the number of deals during the period on its strong mid-market advisory business.

The firm now hopes to rise in the rankings by focusing on Europe's larger deals.

"We want more big deals and more seminal crossborder deals," Richard Murley, a managing director at Rothschild, told the Reuters Investment Banking Summit in London on Wednesday.

Banks are hustling to climb the rankings to maximize their share of profits as European M&A deals are on course for an all-time high in 2006 and expected to continue booming into 2007.

Rothschild, which specializes in M&A advisory and does not take part in other activities such as lending, plans to recruit more big-hitting advisers to try achieving that goal by using the relationships they bring in, said Murley.

The investment bank in June hired top corporate lawyer Anthony Salz from Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. It can also use the services of former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who is an adviser on expansion in Eastern Europe.

One of the benefits of hiring such big hitters is that they also help the company expand into new markets, said Murley.

Schroeder's advisory work for Rothschild is extremely useful in Russia, for example, he said, adding that the investment bank sees markets such as Russia and India as being big growth opportunities.