Latham & Watkins and CMS emerged as the top mergers and acquisitions (M&A) legal advisers in Europe for 2025, according to the latest league table published by GlobalData.

Data from GlobalData’s Financial Deals Database showed Latham & Watkins securing the top spot by deal value, advising on transactions worth a total of $103.9bn during the year.

CMS led the volume ranking, with advisory on 286 deals.

A&O Shearman came second in terms of advised deal value, covering $83.1bn in transactions.

White & Case and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom followed, each involved in deals worth around $65.6bn.

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer completed the top five with $42.6bn in advised deals.

In terms of deal volume, White & Case was ranked second with 169 transactions.

DLA Piper was ranked third by volume with 165 deals, followed by Latham & Watkins with 148 and A&O Shearman with 135.

GlobalData lead analyst Aurojyoti Bose said: “Latham & Watkins and CMS were the clear winners in 2025, having outpaced their peers by a significant margin in terms of value and volume, respectively. While Latham & Watkins was the only adviser to surpass $100 billion mark in deal value, CMS just fell shy from hitting 300 in deal volume.

“Involvement in three mega deals valued at or more than $10 billion played a pivotal role in placing Latham & Watkins in the top spot by value in 2025.  It also held the fourth position by volume in 2025.”

GlobalData’s league tables are based on the real-time tracking of thousands of company websites, advisory firm websites and other reliable sources available on the secondary domain. A dedicated team of analysts monitors all these sources to gather in-depth details for each deal, including adviser names. 

To ensure further robustness to the data, the company also seeks submissions of deals from leading advisers.