The media investment bank DeSilva & Phillips has come out with its annual deals review report (we covered other boutique banks’ reports here and here). Some interesting stats and this below on the tussle between two major players in the media M&A market:

“What about the lion-and-the-unicorn contest between financials and strategics in 2007? Measured by their participation in the top 15 deals of the year, the strategics maintained their ground, doing five of the top 15 deals this year, just as they did in 2006. Their 33% deal-count share, however, understates the strength of strategic buyers: the value of those five deals represented almost two-thirds (62%) of the total dollar value of the top fifteen deals. The interesting question is how did the ongoing turmoil in the credit markets affect the two rival camps in 2007 – and how will it affect their fortunes in the year to come? In the short run, the credit crunch disrupted every deal of size in the fourth quarter, particularly those transactions that were hit, in a sense, in mid-flight. But in the long run – or at least as long as the credit markets are disrupted by the problems of the subprime crisis – we expect that strategics, whose deals tend to be less leveraged than financial deals, will gain a comparative advantage over financial buyers.”

You can download the PDF report here.

Coincidentally, I am at at DeSilva’s Media Dealmakers conference tomorrow in NYC, where I am interviewing Wenda Harris Millard, the president of media at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (NYSE: MSO), in the spotlight interview. Prior to joining MSLO, she was the advertising head at Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO), and would be interesting to get her views on the current Yahoo situation. More to report tomorrow….

Disclaimer: DeSilva & Phillips is a sponsor.