For the second time this century, Vodafone has shaken up investment banks' highly coveted advisory league tables.
An advisory role in the UK group's $130bn deal this month to sell its joint venture stake to Verizon was a prerequisite for a decent position in this year's rankings - just as the telecom company's record $181bn takeover of Mannesmann had been 13 years ago.
The top six investment banks in Mergermarket's list of financial advisers by deal value this year - Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Barclays and UBS - are all working on one or the other side of this key transaction.
While the absence of this blockbuster transaction would not have changed the top four places, it would have made a big difference for rankings below that. Without this deal, Swiss bank UBS would only have ranked 11th and not sixth, while Deutsche Bank, which did not advise on the Verizon deal, would have come fifth and not seventh.
The deal has also catapulted Paul Taubman, the former Morgan Stanley dealmaker who worked on his own, to 12th position in the league table - a feat that has never been achieved before by an individual.
While such a mega-deal brings in up to $600m in total M&A advisory and financing fees, its actual contribution to a bank's bottom line is much less relevant than a league table would suggest.
"It's more of a prestige thing than the dollar amount," says Paul Gulberg, analyst at Portales Partners in New York. "The bragging rights are very important for these guys."
At Goldman, for example, an estimated advisory fee of $57.8m from Vodafone makes up only 3.6 per cent of its overall M&A fee pipeline, according to data from Freeman Consulting.
However with global M&A fees in the third quarter down to their lowest level in four years, bankers say a big benefit of a large transaction such as Verizon - the fees of which are not yet paid - is that they will feed on itself.
"In this sector if one company makes a move, it has a knock-on effect as others review what they need to do to reposition themselves," says Richard Gnodde, co-head of the investment banking division at Goldman.
Bankers also point out that the dealmaking frenzy in recent weeks goes beyond Verizon's sector. "It has been busy everywhere," says Christian Meissner, head of global corporate and investment banking at BofA. "The level of deal activity has really broadened out a lot compared to 18 months ago."
William Vereker, head of corporate client solutions in Europe, the Middle East and Africa at UBS, adds: "This is the first time in five years that the next quarter could be better than the preceding one."
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