India’s AZB & Partners, Singapore’s WongPartnership and Korea’s Kim & Chang have benefited from a resurgence in Asian (ex Japan and Australasia) M&A in the first half of this year by claiming the top three spots on legal advisory leader boards, according to data released by mergermarket. Clifford Chance’s Indian ‘best friend’ AZB advised on 38 deals with a value of US$16.6bn, WongPartnership on 24 transactions worth US$3.9bn and Kim & Chang worked on 24 with a total value of US$3.7bn.

Asia continued its strong pace in M&A deals with US$137.2bn worth of announced deals in the first quarter of this year, up 11.3% from 2009. Outbound Asia M&A activity was also well ahead in 2010, with over US$52.3bn recorded for the first quarter, a 276% increase year-on-year. Deal count rose 20.9% this year, helping the region maintain its share of global M&A.

Wongpartnership was the only firm of the three listed above to make the leader board for legal advisors to Greater China M&A. Coming in at 15th, the firm has  advised on  five deals with a value of US$285m so far this year.

International firms still dominated the M&A league table for Asia (ex. Japan & Australasia) by value. Here, Herbert Smith leads the pack having advised on US$50.15bn worth of deals while Debevoise & Plimpton and Slaughter May finished second (US$46.16bn) and third (US$40,466bn), respectively.

AZB and fellow Indian firm, Talwar, Thakore & Associates, were the only Asian firms to list on the M&A Asia value chart (ex. Japan & Australasia) coming in at 12th and 14th places, respectively.ALB

 Other related stories:

• Kim & Chang, Bae Kim & Lee take on US$363m cosmetics M&A (1 Mar 2010)
• WongPartnership founder takes helm of Singapore Law Society (30 Jun 2010)
• PRC firms break out in M&A league tables (14 Jul 2010)