Despite the rise in mega-deals towards the tail end of 2013, last year yielded the lowest overall value for UK M&A activity since 2001.

A number of high profile private equity buy-outs in the UK pushed several firms into the top 10 global advisers by value, with Simpson Thacher & Bartlett taking the number one spot, followed by Jones Day and Davis Polk. All three firms were up on their 2012 positions.

Commenting on the UK M&A market, Will Pearce, corporate partner at Davis Polk said: "The volume of UK takeovers went off a cliff in 2012/2013.

"Financing is still not easy and we haven't seen many new companies come to the market in recent years; I'm sure this has had and continues to have an impact on public M&A. In terms of private M&A, we've seen more deals, but a number of private equity houses are still weighing up whether to exit through an IPO or a trade sale."

The $130bn (£80.1bn) Vodafone-Verizon deal – which saw roles handed to a host of firms including Simpson Thacher and Davis Polk – was largely responsible for making September the top month last year by deal values, with Q3 totaling $653.7bn (£398.4bn). However, according to data from Mergermarket this dropped 12.7% in Q4 to $570.5bn (£347.7bn), which is down by almost a quarter (24%) on the same period in 2012.

Bob Bishop, UK head of corporate at DLA Piper said: "M&A in the first half of last year was relatively slow; there wasn't a lot of activity, signature deals were rare and there was still a gap between buyers' and sellers' expectations. In contrast, Q3 was a stand-out quarter and Q4 has felt more buoyant – if the whole year had been like the second half it would have been a different story."

The picture is particularly bleak in the UK where total M&A value for Q1-4 last year dropped 12.5% from $127.6bn (£77.7bn) in 2012 to $111.6bn (£68bn), marking the worst year since 2001.

DLA Piper, Linklaters and Freshfields occupy the first three places for deal volume in the UK, mirroring last year's rankings. DLA also comes out on top in the Europe-wide table.

Bishop adds: "We have led the market in volume for almost 10 years now and we haven't seen a tail-off. Going forward we are seeing that the gap in price expectations has narrowed. Private equity is getting increasingly active and is more willing to do all equity deals.

"Confidence is definitely up, and as a result there is more competition for assets and sellers are getting better prices. Buyers don't want to get left behind so there is also a bit of a 'pack' mentality. We expect this momentum to carry through into the first quarter of this year.

"There are hot spots around technology, consumer goods and real estate. With 80% of our work being international it's a huge benefit, if all we did was domestic work we might be feeling some pain."

Some of the major deals which took place in the UK last year included the $25bn (£15.2bn) purchase of Virgin Media by US cable giant Liberty Global, handing roles to Shearman & Sterling, Fried Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson and Allen & Overy. In the US Davis Polk and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer secured roles on the $27.4bn (£16.6bn) acquisition of food giant Heinz by Berkshire Hathaway and 3G Capital.

Ben Spiers, co-head of M&A London at Freshfields said: "The market doesn't feel as bad as these stats suggest – there haven't been many European mega-deals but plenty of smaller ones. We have worked on some pretty large deals including Schneider's takeover of Invensys (£3.4bn) following the sale of its Rail division earlier in the year and Heathrow Airport's sale of Stansted. We expect this year will be much better- M&A is often driven by CEO confidence and share price both of which are up. We are also hoping to see more mega deals across Europe."

Meanwhile, global M&A value is down 3.2% on 2012 standing at $2215.1bn (£1349.8bn). Davis Polk and DLA Piper have topped the global league tables for value and volume respectively.