As sponsors become larger and more sophisticated, and a fluid market for lateral moves continues to disrupt once-settled relationships, the tussle among elite law firms for work from major private equity clients is more competitive than ever.
Last week Legal Business revealed that EQT has recently completed a review of its key global advisers, with Freshfields, Ropes & Gray, Simpson Thacher and Clifford Chance among the successful firms.
The news came after LB also revealed in May that Freshfields had won the lead role for EQT on its acquisition of FTSE 100 company Intertek – a deal which, when completed, will be the Swedish PE firm’s largest European transaction of the last five years.
So which firms have been winning the most high-profile work from EQT in recent years? LB examined data from Mergermarket spanning the buyout house’s 20 largest European transactions of the last decade to see which firms have been coming out on top.
A decade of EQT deals: the firms being called on
The data shows Europe’s largest private equity firm has increasingly concentrated key mandates among a core group of trusted advisers.
In the five-year period since 2021, four firms won multiple instructions on EQT’s 10 largest European deals, twice as many as in the preceding five-year period.
Those four firms include Ropes & Gray, which led on a major deal for EQT at the start of the year – the $3.7bn acquisition of leading secondaries investment firm Coller Capital.
The other top 10 EQT mandate for Ropes in the past five years was its second-biggest European transaction of the past five years – the $14.5bn acquisition of international schools operator Nord Anglia.
The US firm has been taking steps to cement its relationship with EQT, recruiting former group general counsel Paul Dali (pictured) in January.
Alongside Ropes, three other firms won repeat roles on EQT’s major mandates in the past five years – Freshfields and Simpson Thacher, with two apiece, and Kirkland & Ellis, with three.
In contrast, between 2016 and 2020, only Latham & Watkins and Kirkland featured on more than one of EQT’s biggest European deals.
More capital, more advisers
While EQT is building closer relationships with a select group of preferred firms, its growing scale is also creating more opportunities for firms to win work as the complexity, scale and volume of transactions increases.
Several partners interviewed for this article pointed to the rapid growth of EQT’s assets under management (AUM) as a factor behind larger firms receiving repeat instructions.
In 2020, EQT’s AUM sat at around €52bn, but this has since increased five-fold to a massive €270bn.
‘As private capital clients have become bigger,’ one London private equity partner explains, ‘they’ve invested in sophisticated internal legal functions. While individual deal partner relationships are still important, the internal legal team is heavily involved in transactions, so clients value institutional relationships that meet all these touchpoints.’
The size of the transactions that EQT has been handling has also ballooned. From 2016 to 2020, its top deals included only one above $5bn, whereas since 2021 there have been six $5bn-plus deals, with the top two – Intertek and Nord Anglia – both worth close to $15bn.
‘More complex deals are likely to result in repeat advisers,’ says another partner. ‘It has become more professional and more institutionalised – it is not procurement in the standard sense, where price is the only variable – sponsors’ deal teams have to trust the adviser selected.’
While EQT is increasingly returning to the same firms for its biggest transactions, the data also points to involvement from an increasing number of advisers, with 12 different firms taking lead roles across its top deals from 2021 to 2026, up from nine for the previous five years.
As one PE partner puts it: ‘there’s more capital, which means there will be more advisers, because the practice is deeper.’
Cracking the tough nut
Highly-regarded Paul Weiss dealmaker Roger Johnson is known for his track record of work for EQT over the last decade. During his time at Kirkland between 2016 and 2023, he advised on some of its biggest European deals, including the $10bn acquisition of Nestlé Skin Health and its $6bn takeover of London-listed Dechra Pharmaceuticals in 2023.
One London-based private equity partner said that Johnson’s close relationship with EQT had made winning London mandates ‘a tough nut to crack.’
Not long after the Dechra deal in 2023, Johnson left Kirkland to join Paul Weiss, and partner moves can of course create openings for other firms.
‘There is so much dislocation in the market with partners moving – I think clients question whether those moves are in their best interest,’ one partner says.
Another partner goes further: ‘Very rarely is it the case that a client’s favourite lawyer moving is in the best interest of the client. There are circumstances where they prefer a new platform, but generally speaking, when you speak to clients, they find it incredibly frustrating.’
With increasingly complex deals and ever-more sophisticated in-house teams, relationships between law firms and key clients such as EQT are becoming more institutionalised, with star dealmakers carrying less influence than they once did.
‘Firms at the top of the food chain in the private capital world are there for a reason,’ one private equity co-head says. ‘These relationships are not driven by one or two partners; the whole infrastructure of the firm is geared to deliver for private capital clients at scale.’
