The sale of H.J. Heinz to Berkshire Hathaway and 3G Capital is big in many ways â€" the headline price of $23 billion, for one. But one notable fact is that most of the banks putting the deal together aren’t bulge-bracket firms.
Most of the work in putting the deal together was done by independent advisory shops, with Lazard as lead adviser to Berkshire and 3G and Centerview Partners as one of the main bankers to Heinz. Another, Moelis & Company, worked for a transaction committee of Heinz’s board.
While there were bigger banks involved in the deal as well, people briefed on the matter said that they played supporting roles in the transaction. Bank of America Merrill Lynch was Heinz’s other financial adviser, and JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo provided debt financing and some advice to Berkshire and 3G.
Indeed, the two perennial leaders in the race for top mergers adviser, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, are nowhere to be seen in the transaction.
Lazard, and in particular its global head of investment banking, Antonio Weiss, has long been an adviser to 3G, having helped arrange deals like the investment firm’s purchase of Burger King. Mr. Weiss has also been the longtime banker to InBev, the product of deals engineered by 3G backer Jorge Paulo Lemann that culminated in the 2008 merger of the Brazilian-Belgian brewer and Anheuser Busch.
(Earlier on Thursday, Anheuser-Busch InBev announced a significant revision of its deal to by Grupo Modelo of Mexico, in an effort to head off a battle with the Justice Department on antitrust grounds.)
Centerview Partners has been especially busy over the past several months, having advised on transactions like Clearwire‘s proposed sale to Sprint Nextel and Alliance Boots’ $6.7 billion deal with Walgreens.
And Moelis & Company was an adviser to NYSE Euronext in it! s planned! sale to the IntercontinentalExchange, as well as to the creditors committee of American Airlines as part of the company’s merger with US Airways.
Independent investment banks have long boasted that their business model â€" providing only advice, without trying to sell clients a plethora of other products â€" has its benefits, including fewer conflicts of interest.
That isn’t to say that full-service banks have been struggling of late. For example, JPMorgan has had leading roles in the other deals worth ver $15 billion announced over the past two weeks, including the takeover bids for Dell and Virgin Media, as well as the sale of General Electric‘s remaining interests in NBC Universal.
