A place on a series of big ticket European deals helped spur a record first quarter for advisory revenues at Greenhill & Co, marking a turnaround from a difficult 2017 at the US investment bank.

The independent advisory firm posted overall revenues of $87.5m for the first quarter of 2018, up 54% from the same period last year, in part because of a significant increase in fees from big European transactions. The bulk of the revenues were from advisory fees, which totalled $86.8m.