Mergers and acquisitions bankers will be delighted with some new academic research which claims that bidding companies gain more when employing top-tier advisers for public acquisitions and that, just as importantly, the use of league tables is justified.

Andrey Golubov of Cass Business School, City University London, Dimitris Petmezas from the School of Management, University of Surrey, and Nickolaos Travlos of the ALBA Graduate Business School, Greece, have written a paper called "When it pays to pay your investment banker: new evidence on the role of financial advisors in M&As" : http://hvrd.me/kUntQq.