London - The collapse of talks between India's Bharti Airtel and South Africa's MTN Group means banks have lost out on an estimated R370m-plus of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) fees.
Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank, which were advising MTN, were on course to share $34m in fees, according to estimates for Thomson Reuters compiled by Freeman & Co, a merger consultancy.
Standard Chartered and Barclays, which advised Bharti, and Goldman Sachs, which worked for the company's shareholder SingTel, were on course to share $25m.
Instead, the banks may get a retainer payment of just 5% to 10% of the success fees, Freeman says.
Talks to create the world's third-largest mobile operator collapsed for the second time in just over a year on Wednesday. The deal, based on a complex minority share swap, would have been one of 2009's biggest M&A transactions.
Bharti, India's largest mobile operator, blamed the South African government for the latest breakdown in a deal which faced close scrutiny from regulators and politicians.
The tie-up's collapse harks back to last year, when the acute phase of the financial crisis pushed deal cancellations to a record, of close to $800bn.
The failure of more than 1 100 deals deprived banks of an estimated $815m-plus in fees.
- Reuters