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Partners at the elite UK boutique advisory Robey Warshaw split £40.5mn of profits in the firm’s final full year before it was acquired by the US investment bank Evercore.
Annual accounts published on Saturday showed that the firm’s best-paid partner, assumed to be former Morgan Stanley banker Sir Simon Robey, was paid £23.8mn for the year to March.
The accounts, which cover the year preceding the firm’s agreed $196mn sale in July to Evercore, underscore Robey’s status as one of the best paid dealmakers in Europe. Robey has garnered more than £200mn in earnings since 2013.
The firm posted revenues of about £56mn for the year, a drop from the previous year’s record turnover of £86mn. Evercore acquired Robey Warshaw as the advisory firm stepped up its challenge to compete in the top tier of global investment banks in Europe.
Robey Warshaw’s partner ranks expanded in 2021 to include former UK Chancellor George Osborne. He left this week for a job at OpenAI.
While at the firm, Osborne helped secure a high-profile mandate advising on Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital’s purchase of Chelsea Football Club, as well as a role advising on the torturous, two-year sale of the Telegraph Media Group.
Osborne received little from the firm’s near-$200mn takeover, consistent with how Robey Warshaw has paid its senior dealmakers in recent years, the Financial Times reported.
Alongside Robey, the firm’s co-founders are former UBS banker Simon Warshaw and former Morgan Stanley banker Philip Apostolides. Last year it hired former Aviva executive Chetan Singh from JPMorgan as a partner.
Total wages for the firm’s 16 employees, excluding its five partners, were about £11mn for the year, down from £12.4mn the previous year, according to the accounts published in Companies House.
The results were released in a year where UK dealmaking has risen on a surge in interest from overseas buyers. Total UK mergers and acquisitions totalled about $367.3bn this year, according to data from the London Stock Exchange Group.
Robey Warshaw has continued its involvement advising on high-profile situations this year, such as Santander’s £2.65bn acquisition of high street lender TSB and Johnson Matthey’s sale of its catalyst technologies business to Honeywell for £1.8bn.
The firm is also advising ITV on its talks to sell its television business to Sky in a possible £1.6bn deal.
