The corporate law firm, which recently merged with Vincent & Beatty LLP, advised on 66 of the 836 transactions in 2024, according to the latest Experian M&A report.

It was closely followed by Matheson with 64 transactions, A&L Goodbody with 59, Arthur Cox with 58, Philip Lee with 57, Eversheds Sutherland with 50, Beauchamps with 49, William Fry and Regan Wall each on 48, and McCann FitzGerald on 40.

The Irish M&A market broke records in 2024 with a total of 836 transactions, up from the 822 deals announced during 2023, which were worth a total of €57 billion.

“Competition for Irish assets was high, and a slight decline in corporate M&A was more than offset by an 87 per cent upturn in buy-out volume and a six per cent increase in venture capital transactions,” Experian said.

“Meanwhile, although deal value in Ireland did not quite hit the same historic highs — sitting slightly under the annual average for the ten years since 2015 — the €57 billion worth of deals represented a welcome three per cent increase year on year, boosted by a flurry of high-value M&A in the second half of the year.”

The Experian report notes: “The increasing demand for advanced chips to power next-generation technologies has been a key driver of global deal activity in 2024.

“This race for computing power fuelled the biggest transaction of the year in Ireland, where private equity group Apollo Global Management inked a €10bn deal for a 49 per cent equity interest in Intel’s Fab 34 semiconductor manufacturing facility.”