Slaughters' M&A payday run continues with Blackstone's Senior deal

Slaughter and May is in line for another significant payday, this time for its advice to UK-listed Senior on its takeover by Blackstone and Tinicum.

Regulatory filings for the deal show that Senior has set aside £7.9 million in legal fees, while the buyer consortium - led by Linklaters - has earmarked £15.9 million, taking the total bill to around £24 million.

The £1.4 billion all-cash acquisition, announced in April, will see aerospace manufacturer Senior taken private and delisted from the London Stock Exchange. The company produces components used across aerospace, defence and energy systems.

Slaughters’ dominance continues

While the overall fee pot is substantial, it falls short of some of the largest recent public M&A deals. Nuveen’s £9.9 billion takeover of asset manager Schroders, for example, is expected to generate legal fees of around £37.8 million once complete.

The deal adds to a string of high-profile public M&A mandates for Slaughters over the past 18 months, which has continued to dominate the market as - often US-backed - buyers target undervalued UK-listed companies.

Recent instructions include advising Schroders on the Nuveen deal, where the company set aside £23.5 million in fees, and acting for Zurich on its £8.2 billion takeover of Beazley, where the insurance giant has a £25 million legal budget.

The firm also advised John Wood Group on its recent takeover by Dubai-based engineering company Sidara, where John Wood allocated £32.5 million for legal fees.

Of the eight deals set out in the table above, Slaughter and May was involved as lead legal counsel on all bar Qualcomm’s takeover of Alphawave, which saw Paul Weiss and Linklaters enlisted. The total legal bill set aside by the firm’s clients on those deals was £133.5 million.

With the exception of Sidara’s takeover of John Wood Group and Zurich’s acquisition of Beazley, each deal involved a US-based buyer acquiring a UK-listed target.