DealMakers AFRICA Annual Awards Results 2023

West Africa’s notable company mergers and acquisitions and their advisers have been recognised at the DealMakers AFRICA Annual Gala Awards held in Lagos.
The awards ceremony, held at Ebony Life Place, also tracked the work carried out by the advisers in the mergers and acquisition and general corporate finance space in 2023.

The DealMakers AFRICA awards are based essentially on objective evidence – the value of deals or transactions and, the number of them. In only three of the awards is selection subjective and these are approached with considerable circumspection; they are the Deal of the Year, the Private Equity Deal of the Year and the Individual DealMaker of the Year.

Nominations are received from the advisory firms for these subjective awards – the DealMakers AFRICA’s team produces a shortlist and an eventual winner is decided on guided by the following criteria: Transformational elements, execution complexity, deal size and potential value creation. For the Individual DealMaker the deals worked on, the contribution made, the execution complexity and peer recognition are considered.

In the West Africa Deal of the Year category, DealMakers AFRICA shortlisted three deals. These were: the acquisition by STAC Marine Offshore of Abo FPSO vessel, the acquisition of a majority stake in iSON Xperiences by Verod Capital and AfricInvest and the investment by Verod Capital and DPI into Pan African Towers.

The winner of the West Africa Deal of the Year was Verod Capital and DPI’s investment into Pan Africa Towers. The impact of the investment will be to accelerate the development of the local industry contributing to job creation, market share expansion, enhanced organisational performance and the subsequent growth in revenue. Advisers to the winning transaction were Chapel Hill Denham, Exotix Advisory, Banwo & Ighodalo, Olaniwun Ajayi, G Elias and Charles Russell Speechlys.