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Morgan Stanley topped Corporate Finance's 2004 "Deals of the Year," taking honors in Overall Debt, Equity and M&A. As the CF editors noted, the deals all exhibited "innovation, success in achieving their goals and a positive response from the market." The Firm took part in more honored transactions than any other investment bank.
Morgan Stanley was recognized for:
In addition, the Firm took regional honors for:
The judges singled out Morgan Stanley in particular for its work on the Calpine Generating Company financing, a complicated deal that the Firm won after an previously-attempted deal, handled by Deutsche Bank, went awry.
"Morgan Stanley managed to restructure the deal, price it quickly and still lower the WACC [weighted average cost of capital] on what was the largest high yield offering of the year," said David Dunnigan, a partner at Clifford Chance and one of this year's judges. His colleague Derek Strocher, Treasurer at Brake Brothers, noted: "the work to turn the deal around in a short time period was impressive."
The Firm's work in structuring the PagesJaunes IPO won high praise from CF, noting that "With the build up to the PagesJaunes IPO so impressively orchestrated, the launch itself could have been an anticlimax." The Google IPO has been winning Morgan Stanley several accolades, most recently profiled in BusinessWeek.
For Aventis, Morgan Stanley was able to slow Sanofi's hostile bid, which CF described as "audaciously low." In addition, the Firm sweetened the deal for Aventis shareholders by biding enough time for rival Novartis to consider bidding, forcing a higher Sanofi bid, as well as by structuring a warrant against the threat of Sanofi losing the patent on its cash cow Plavix.
The awards were based on submissions from banks. A CF team used those to generate a shortlist, from which the judging panel made its decisions. The panel chose winners for Asia, Europe and the U.S. The overall winner was chosen from the winning regional deals.
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