General Mills advice helps Brunswick to top of table

Brunswick handled all last month's biggest UK M&A deals, beating

its rivals to the top of the adviser league with a £13bn lead.

The consultancy, which has itself recently been in the media spotlight

over allegations of 'dirty tricks' on behalf of client New Star Asset

Management, clocked up 14 deals worth £14.7bn in PRWeek's November

Deal Watch.

Brunswick handled comms surrounding at least five of the major deals

last month, including the completion of General Mills' £7.1bn

takeover of food-maker Pillsbury, for which it acted on behalf of

Pillsbury parent firm Diageo.

November also saw the announcement of Brunswick client P&O Princess

Cruises' £5.2bn bid for Royal Caribbean Cruises, alongside the

£1.3bn sale of TXU Europe's East Anglian electricity network to

London Electricity - another client on Brunswick's roster.

The Maitland Consultancy was second behind Brunswick, advising on £1.6bn-worth of deals, according to the figures, produced exclusively for

PRWeek by corporate finance information firm Zephus, based on publicised

deals involving at least one UK company.

Maitland's main coup was handling PR for Unilever surrounding the sale

of its commercial cleaning business DiverseyLever to Johnson Wax

Professional for £1.1bn.

Financial Dynamics came third in the ranking, with 15 deals totalling

£603m.

The agency this week confirmed it would emerge unscathed from parent

firm Cordiant Communications' latest round of 1,100 redundancies.

Frequent high-rankers, such as Citigate Dewe Rogerson, scraped into the

Top 10 advising on deals worth just a fraction of the amount recorded in

past months.

But Haggie Financial entered the table for the first time, largely

through handling PR for BRIT Insurance Holdings' bid to raise £160m by issuing shares and convertible bonds.

DEAL WATCH NOVEMBER 2001 RANKING

Ranking Financial PR Company No of Deals Deal Value

pounds m

1 Brunswick 14 14,693

2 The Maitland Consultancy 7 1,645

3 Financial Dynamics 15 603

4 Citigate Dewe Rogerson 9 599

5 Weber Shandwick Square Mile 11 211

6 Haggie Financial 2 163

7 Cardew & Co 2 122

8 College Hill Associates 9 92

9 GCI Financial 7 91

10 Hudson Sandler 4 58

Source: Zephus Corporate Finance Knowledge (www.zephus.com)