Laurence Grafstein joined UBS as co-head of M&A in the Americas at the start of this month and has already made his mark with a role as lead banker on a $20bn-plus deal in the telecoms sector.

The Swiss bank this week worked as co-lead financial adviser - alongside Citigroup and Rothschild - to US telecoms group Sprint Nextel, which agreed to sell a 70% stake to Japanese peer SoftBank for $20.1bn. The deal is worth $34.6bn when taking into account Sprint's debt pile, according to Dealogic, making it the largest Japanese outbound M&A deal on record.