Merrill Lynch has taken the top spot in the final European announced mergers and acquisitions advisory league table for the first quarter, working on $35.2bn ($40bn) worth of deals.

Towards the end of last week, there was some uncertainty as to whether Merrill Lynch would get credit for working on the merger between Nordic telecoms companies Telia and Sonera, which will create a company worth around €19bn ($16.7m). Merrill Lynch was working for Telia on the deal along with Carnegie, and Telia confirmed as much. However, some rivals suggested that Merrill Lynch had stopped working for Telia last year and was getting league table credit for work done earlier on. Both Thomson Financial and Dealogic, the investment banking research firm, were reviewing the deal. If Merrill had not got credit for the Telia/Sonera deal it would have been several steps lower in the league table rankings.