Glencore-Xstrata Rainmaker Michel Antakly Talks European M&A

Michel Antakly craves routine as an antidote to the hurly-burly of deal making. Every Saturday the senior managing director of Morgan Stanley’s M&A division plays tennis with his coach for two hours. Antakly devotes Sundays to his wife and two daughters at their family home in London, where he’s lived for virtually his entire 24-year career at Morgan Stanley.

在此期间，拥有法国和黎巴嫩公民身份的软口语银行家已经致力于欧洲的许多顶级并购交易。但是，47岁，从未追逐大型管理工作或华丽的标题。“我喜欢靠近我的客户，获得他们的信任，并帮助我们通过周围并购和公司财务交易的复杂战略和战术问题，”他说。“我喜欢与交易方面的关系建设方面。”

Morgan Stanley entrusts Antakly with some of its biggest clients. They include commodities trading giant Glencore International, which turned to him when it wanted to acquire miner and Swiss neighbor Xstrata. Antakly was involved in every step ofthe $45.8 billion merger, last year’s largest.2012年，摩根士丹利在欧洲，中东和非洲的并购成交量攀升至第三次，据拓荒作用，建议142项价值2620亿美元的交易。这是前一年的1600亿美元的64％飙升，这对第五个地方有益。

Antakly’s relationship with Baar-based Glencore began in 2007, when John Mack, then Morgan Stanley’s chairman, introduced the trading firm’s deal-hungry CEO, Ivan Glasenberg, to his investment banking team. In 2009, Antakly headed the Morgan Stanley group that served as joint global coordinator of Glencore’s $2.2 billion convertible bond issue; this led to the same role in the company’s 2011 initial public offering. The $10 billion IPO gave Glencore the equity currency for striking a deal with Zug-based Xstrata, of which it was already the largest shareholder.

Life wasn’t always so stable for Antakly. Born in Beirut, he was sent to France to study after the Lebanese Civil War broke out in 1975, and he moved to Paris without his parents in 1981. In those tumultuous years he excelled at chess; at age 16 he beat France’s reigning champion, who was playing a dozen games simultaneously.

1989年,获得经济学学位后哈utes études commerciales de Paris, an elite French business school known for producing top-level bureaucrats, Antakly joined Morgan Stanley’s London office as an associate. Before heading to California to pursue an MBA at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, he was part of the team that advised Sweden’s Investor, the Wallenberg family investment vehicle, on its 1991 buyout of automaker Saab-Scania. (Antakly is still an adviser to the Wallenbergs; in 2007 he helped Scania fend off a $13.7 billion bid by a rival truck manufacturer, Germany’s Man.)

In 1993, Antakly returned to Morgan Stanley, where he spent two years in the fixed-income derivatives department. But later in the decade, he found himself at the center of   Europe’s M&A explosion. His mandates included representing Dutch bank Fortis on its $11.1 billion acquisition of Belgium’s Generale Bank in 1998 and Canada’s Alcan on its $7.1 billion hostile takeover of French aluminum producer Pechiney in 2003. Three years later he was part of the team that staunchly defended Luxembourg steelmaker Arcelor against an ultimately successful $33.1 billion hostile bid by Rotterdam, Netherlands–based Mittal Steel Co., which was forced to double its offer.

In today’s sluggish European M&A market, Antakly and Morgan Stanley have weathered the downturn with help from Glencore-Xstrata, a merger that still needs Chinese regulatory approval. “I spend as much time advising clients not to do deals as I do helping them do the right deals or pitching them ideas,” Antakly says. “I expect market volumes to remain depressed for the next three years, at least in Europe, so staying close to clients and being a loyal adviser will be more important than ever.” • •