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Welcome to 9fin’s latest high yield Bond Law Firm League Tables for Europe, covering the first half of 2025.
For the underlying deals that were included in the numbers below, see 9fin’s bond screener here. When we counted deals, we looked at an Offering Memorandum as one deal even if it had multiple tranches. But for 9fin’s bond screeners each bond is broken out as a separate instrument. Our dataset includes bonds with an issue date in the first two quarters of 2025. For those interested, our methodology for determining the dataset is at the bottom of this piece.
Rankings
2025 brought a slight decline in European high yield bond issuance over the first half, with the volume down 6% year-on-year to €30.2bn. The 62 deals closed over the first two quarters had representation from 22 different counsels.
Our tables below show the top counsels based on total deal count as well as broken down by issuer and bank counsel. Rather than a top 10 rankings, we list the top 11 counsels in total deal count due to a multiway tie for seventh and the top nine in bank and issuer counsel due to multiway ties for 10th in each.
We have also included how the top firms fared relative to their ranking in 2024. Latham & Watkins remained safely in the lead, but there were several notable changes, including Paul Hastings and Weil Gotshal & Manges rising sharply in the ranks relative to last year.
Top 11 counsels by total deals
Download the full league tables below to get rankings for issuer counsels, bank counsels, top counsels by deal volume and more.
