To our clients and friends,
2022 was a strong year for the M&A market, if not at the unprecedented level of 2021. Seward & Kissel’s clients engaged in a wide variety of transactions around the globe involving interesting businesses in diverse industries. They kept us very busy, and it was our pleasure to work with them to complete important deals.
Representative of Seward & Kissel’s primary industry focus, deals involving the purchase or sale of investment management firms, broker-dealers and other strategic transactions in the financial services industry were once again the largest portion of the 2022 work of the Business Transactions Group. This Year in Review highlights a selection of these transactions, including the widely discussed merger of our clients Tiedemann Advisors and TIG Advisors with UK-based Alvarium and special purpose acquisition company Cartesian Growth Corporation to form a publicly-traded global wealth and asset manager with assets under management and advisement of $54 billion. Other notable deals included the sale of wealth manager Dyson Capital Advisors to Pathstone, the acquisition by Hudson Structured Finance of the business of fund manager Northern Shipping Fund Management, the acquisition by Marex of broker ED&F Man Capital Markets and multiple acquisitions of minority stakes in investment management firms for clients that included Kudu Investment Management and iM Global Partner. The Firm also continued to have market leading activity handling seed and accelerator investment transactions related to fund managers. Our IM Deals blog (imdealsblog.sewkis.com), which follows transactions and developments involving the investment management industry, continues to be widely read by participants in the sector.
Private equity deals are another area of consistent work for the Business Transactions Group, with our team handling multiple transactions in diverse industries for private equity sponsor clients like Growth Catalyst Partners and Estancia Capital Partners. We also had a number of clients sell their businesses to private equity-sponsored purchasers, including the sale of Chainlogix to New Water Capital. Our very active focus on helping veterinary practices to monetize the value of their businesses saw multiple such transactions completed in 2022. In addition, our investment fund and other clients pursued numerous venture capital, growth stage and other private investment transactions in a wide variety of businesses.
Shipping industry transactions were also part of the mix in 2022 consistent with the Firm’s leading position in that sector, with this Review highlighting only one of these deals, the $330 million acquisition by Diana Shipping (NYSE: DSX) of nine dry bulk vessels from Sea Trade Holdings. Other 2022 transactions in the industry were not publicly announced or were not completed.
The work of Seward & Kissel’s Business Transactions Group continued to receive independent recognition during 2022. The M&A Advisor, at its 2022 awards ceremony, named Seward & Kissel as the winner of its 2022 Law Firm of the Year award. Chambers and Partners, in its 2022 USA Guide, ranked Seward & Kissel as Highly Regarded for Corporate/M&A, saying the firm is “particularly adept at sell-side and midmarket transactions,” is “recognized for its cross-border capabilities,” and “often advises clients working in [the] investment management and shipping industr[ies].” Likewise, The Legal 500, in its United States 2022 edition, recommended Seward & Kissel for middle-market M&A work, describing the team as being “noted for its broad capabilities in investment management” and “also active in the shipping, finance, media, veterinary and private equity fields.”
The Seward & Kissel BTG Team
