Rothschild lands Santos advisory role following beauty parade

Advisory firm Rothschild has won the role to become the independent adviser to takeover target Santos, which recently received a $9.48 billion takeover bid from Harbour Energy.

Rothschild fended off competition from other independent boutiques pitching for the role, such as Luminis Partners, Flagstaff, Greenhill and Gresham.

The beauty parade was held on Thursday and the latest appointment will see Rothschild work alongside Santos’ investment bank Deutsche and also J.B North & Co, a boutique run by Jon North, who is known to be close to the Santos chief executive Kevin Gallagher.

John Wylie has previously worked for Santos but has recently been more focused on his own personal interests and has stepped away from the assignment.

Rothschild recently won much kudos over its role advising Shell on its $3.5 billion exit out of Woodside Petroleum last week.

The sell down was executed through a ‘blind date auction’ an approach that would have kept fees in check for the global oil giant.

UniSuper and the Singapore government-backed GIC were the two major acquirers of the stock, each buying up about $700m of shares and the sell down was carried out through Morgan Stanley and UBS.

Harbour Energy lobbed a $9.48 billion for Santos in August and is believed to now be preparing a higher offer for the company.

Working for Harbour Energy is JPMorgan and Highbury Partnership.