NEW YORK—Sard Verbinnen & Co has again topped the global ranking of public relations advisors on mergers and acquisitions, coming in at number one by both volume of deals and value according to mergermarket.

The New York-based corporate and financial firm worked on 264 deals in 2018, coming in ahead of Kekst CNC, FTI Consulting, Brunswick Group, and WPP’s Finsbury Hering Schuppener network. The firm was also top in terms of deal value, handling transactions worth $476 billion, beating out Brunswick, Finsbury Hering Schuppener, Joele Frank Wilkinson Brimmer Katcher, and FTI.

It was the second consecutive year on top of both rankings for Sard Verbinnen.

Sard Verbinnen also topped the volume and value rankings in the US, with Kekst CNC and Joele Frank taking the second and third spots in terms of number of transactions, and Joele Frank and Brunswick rounding out the top three in value of deals worked.

In Europe, FTI was number one in terms of deals worked, ahead of Brunswick and Finsbury Hering Schuppener, while Brunswick was top of mergermarket’s value rankings, ahead of Finsbury and FTI. Brunswick also led the UK value league table (ahead of Finsbury and Maitland) but Maitland was top in terms of deal volume (beating out FTI and Brunswick).

In Germany, Finsbury Hering Schuppener worked more deals than anyone else, while Kekst CNC was number one in the value ranking. In France, Image Sept led the volume table, with DGM Consult topping the value league. In Italy, Barabino was number one in volume, with Brunswick number one in value. In Spain, Kreab (volume) and Llorente & Cuenca (value) were the leaders. And in the Nordics, Kekst CNC led on both metrics.

Sard Verbinnen was tops in terms of deals worked in Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan), beating Brunswick and FTI, while Brunswick was on top in terms of transaction value, leading FTI and Sard. In Japan, Sard Verbinnen was number one on both the volume and value tables.