Insider Media Limited

Law firm Hammonds has been ranked ninth in Mergermarket's deal league table for the year to date. Hammonds, which has offices in Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and London, has worked on deals totalling £2.7bn..

The firm has completed 30 deals this year and moves up one place in the merger and acquisitions (M&A) statistics agency's chart.

Jonathan Jones, corporate finance partner, said: "Despite the continued economic uncertainty we’ve had an exceptional year in a number of respects.

"Our public M&A practice has been strong throughout, our private equity team have completed some complex deals and there has been an increase in cross-border M&A activity.

"I am optimistic that 2011 will also be a decent year for the mid-market and that is reflected, in the activity levels of the regional corporate finance advisors who have relatively full pipelines of deals for the first half of 2011.

"For the private equity market, these are driven by the requirements of VCs to churn their portfolios and get cash out of the door for funds raised at the height of the market in 2007.

"The corporate finance market has come back quite strongly and looks to be continuing, with public M&A transactions forming the bulk with sale mandates filing up the pipeline."

Earlier this year, Hammonds revealed it was in merger talks with US-based Squire, Sanders & Dempsey over a deal to create one of the world’s top 50 law firms. If the merger goes ahead, the combined firm would employ more than 1,300 lawyers and revenues would top £405m.