LONDON —Three financial PR firms – Joele Frank, Sard Verbinnen & Co and Kekst CNC – dominate the rankings of the communications practitioners who have advised on the most valuable M&A deals in North America and EMEA.

The 2020 rankings from M&S professionals’ platform MergerLinks, which looks at deals of over £100 million, found that four practitioners from Joele Frank were among the top 10 M&A advisors in North America, with the table topped by founder and managing partner Frank herself (pictured), who advised on deals worth a total of nearly £110 billion over the year.

Frank’s colleagues Eric Brielmann, Matthew Sherman and Andrew Siegel came in second, fourth and sixth place in the North America table, respectively.

Three practitioners from Sard Verbinnen & Co made the North America top 10: John Christiansen (third), George Sard (fifth) and Andrew Cole (eighth), as did two practitioners from Kekst CNC: Jeremy Fielding (seventh) and Daniel Yunger (ninth). Tenth place was taken by Steven Lipin at Gladstone Place Partners.

MergerLinks noted that the healthcare and technology sectors, semiconductors in particular, had driven the largest M&A deals over the year in North America.

The value of the deals across EMEA was worth a fraction of North America, and spread across more independent firms, although two spots also went to Kekst CNC practitioners. The top M&A PR advisor in the region in 2020 was Kekst CNC partner Richard Campbell, who advised on deals worth a total of £30 billion; his colleague Oliver Mann also took fifth place.

Two spots in the EMEA top 10 ranking also went to practitioners from Finsbury Glover Hering: Phoebe Kebbel, in eighth place, and Alexander Geiser, in tenth place.

The other places in the EMEA table went to FTI Consulting’s Ed Bridges, in second place; Auro Palomba from Community Group (third); Anne Meaux from Image Sept (fourth); Charles Pretzlik from Brunswick in sixth place; Graeme Wilson from Tulchan Communications (sixth); and Ben Foster from Teneo (ninth).