Kirkland & Ellis has claimed the top spot in the U.K. M&A league table for the first quarter of this year, climbing eight places to unseat DLA Piper amid a sharp drop in deal count.  

Compared with the same period a year ago, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer jumped nine places to come in second, while CMS dropped a slot to third and DLA Piper came in fourth. Linklaters entered the top 10 at sixth and Slaughter and May came in ninth.

One Kirkland partner said there were still deals coming through from Europe and private equity activity was strong. He added that you "don't have to be a rocket scientist" to figure out that Brexit is related to the national deal count slowdown.

This year's placings came amid a 28 percent drop in deal count – from 369 to 262 – and a near-36 percent fall in deal value to $27 billion, according to media and data analysis group Mergermarket. The deal rate was down from 406 in the final three months of last year. During the past five years, the first-quarter deal count has come in comfortably above 300.

Robert Bishop, DLA Piper's global co-chair and corporate partner said both the U.K. and Europe have experienced a slowdown in deals and will continue to do so while there is still a lot of uncertainty.

He said: "There's plenty of money out there in terms of PE dry powder and available debt, but other than Brexit, there's a general concern around cross-border deals and that the amount coming out of China is slowing down. Another issue is the trade war with the U.S. – that deal pipeline has pretty much dried up."

U.K. private equity buyouts have dropped to below 50 for the first time since the first quarter of 2016. The U.K. domestic M&A deals fell from 229 in the first quarter of 2018 to 173 this year. During the same period, cross-border inbound M&A dropped from 177 to 89.

Norton Rose Fulbright head of corporate, M&A and securities for Europe, Middle East and Asia, Raj Karia, said: "Lots of deals – more than average – were closed in the fourth quarter of last year, because there was a lot of pressure to get them done before Christmas. Clients wanted to close these deals before the New Year and the final run-up to Brexit."

He said that despite a significant slowdown in deals at the start of the year, towards the end of the first quarter the firm started to see an increase in M&A work. He said that although Brexit has still not happened, because people were expecting it to be done by now, they have now started to "go ahead and push the button", and he expects this to continue.

Meanwhile, initial public offerings have had their slowest start to any year for a decade, according to figures from the London Stock Exchange.

DLA's Bishop said this slowdown raises concerns about London's financial stability: "If a client wants to be in a serious financial centre, then how viable is it to use the London Stock Exchange? If you have the choice to raise money – stronger markets right now would be Hong Kong or the U.S."