Evercore buys London’s elite M&A boutique Robey Warshaw for $196mn
US investment bank acquires firm where former chancellor George Osborne is among five-strong partnership
Evercore has agreed to buy elite UK advisory firm Robey Warshaw for $196mn, as the US investment bank steps up its challenge to the likes of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase in Europe with the addition of some of London’s best-known dealmakers.
New York-based Evercore will pay the equivalent of $40mn for each of Robey Warshaw’s five partners, which include former UK chancellor George Osborne, as it strengthens its presence in the second-largest market after the US for investment banking fees.
The deal will transform Evercore’s lagging position in Britain, where since its founding in 2013 Robey Warshaw has consistently won mandates against Wall Street’s dominant banks.
It also settles a debate over the future of Robey Warshaw, whose namesake founders — former Morgan Stanley executive Sir Simon Robey and former UBS banker Simon Warshaw — are 65 and 59 years respectively.
Along with Philip Apostolides, the trio carved a niche as advisers to blue-chip companies such as BP, Vodafone, LSEG, National Grid, HSBC and Santander.
The firm has advised on many of the biggest ticket UK deals of the past decade including the £79bn takeover of brewer SABMiller by AB InBev, SoftBank’s £24bn purchase of chip designer Arm and LSEG’s $27bn acquisition of data provider Refinitiv.
However the firm has added just two partners since its founding, hiring Osborne in 2021 and JPMorgan financial services banker Chetan Singh last year.
“I don’t think I’ve ever worked with a more talented, more able banker than Simon Robey,” said Evercore’s founder and senior chair Roger Altman in an interview.
He added: “Discussions evolved over a very long period of time and they finally culminated in a mutual sense that this was the right thing to do.”
Evercore chief executive John Weinberg said the deal was “not a decision to pivot away from the US” but reflected the opportunity the bank saw for European growth.
“It wouldn’t be M&A unless Robey Warshaw were available. We’re not a firm that has looked for big transactions, we’ve done it person by person.”
The firm has made Robey personally one of the UK’s best-paid advisers, with more than £200mn in earnings since 2013, including £40.5mn in the year to March 2024.
Robey has consistently out-earned his fellow partners, receiving close to 50 per cent or more of the firm’s profits each year. Robey Warshaw reported turnover of £86mn last year and employs a total of 18 people.
“We haven’t done this to capitalise our careers and move on; it’s financially attractive — but fairly so . . . it’s very much more this is where I want to spend the balance of my career,” Robey said. “There’s also an element of me putting my firm and Simon’s firm in a safe place.”
The $196mn (£146mn) purchase price will be split into two tranches, half in Evercore shares when the deal closes and the remainder a year later in either cash or stock. There is also the potential for Robey Warshaw’s partners to secure further payouts if they hit undisclosed performance targets.
Founded in 1995 by former US deputy Treasury secretary Altman, Evercore at first challenged the boutique investment banks such as Lazard and Rothschild for roles advising on mergers and acquisitions.
However, it has risen to become one of the top M&A advisers on Wall Street alongside Blair Effron’s privately held Centerview Partners, regularly challenging for the third or fourth spot in advisory fee rankings.
The firm had not made similar inroads in Europe until much more recently, lacking scale in both the UK and continental Europe despite its 2011 acquisition of boutique investment bank Lexicon, for which it paid about £86mn.
In the past 18 months, Evercore has renewed its efforts, making a high-profile move into the French market with the hire of three senior bankers from Lazard, and poaching top Citigroup dealmaker Luigi de Vecchi to serve as chair of continental Europe earlier this year.
A deal for Robey Warshaw marks a milestone in Evercore’s European expansion, and marks one of the firm’s largest acquisitions since it acquired brokerage and research firm ISI Group in 2014.
After the acquisition, Evercore will now have about 400 bankers across nine countries in Europe. Globally it had roughly 150 senior managing directors — its highest rank — across its investment banking business at the end of last year.