M&A Watch: Goldman Sachs Regains Its Midas Touch

by Brenon Daly

Goldman Sachs (GS) is having a September to remember, after an uncharacteristically quiet run throughout 2009. We noted in our mid-year league table report that Goldman, which topped our annual rankings 2005-07, had slipped to a distant seventh place in the first half of this year. Since the beginning of September, however, the bank has regained its Midas touch.

Goldman has worked on four tech deals announced so far this month, with a total equity value of $7.9bn. (The September spending accounts for some 60% of the value of all deals that Goldman has advised on so far this year.) The transactions: sole advisor to eBay (EBAY) on its $2bn Skype divestiture; advisor to Intuit (INTU) on its $170m purchase of Mint; sole advisor to Adobe (ADBE) on its $1.8bn acquisition of Omniture; and sole advisor to Perot Systems (PER) in its (relatively richly priced) $3.9bn sale to Dell (DELL), which stands as the largest tech transaction in five months.

By way of a final thought on Goldman’s return, we’d note the unusual situation that popped up in the buy-side deals that Goldman worked last week. We can’t recall the last time we saw any bulge-bracket bank get a print one day (Intuit’s purchase of Mint) and then turn around the very next day and get a print that’s 10 times larger (Adobe’s purchase of Omniture).