Big balance sheets helped Barclays and Deutsche Bank, for example, to achieve number 2 and 3 rankings in M&A league tables last year, challenging U.S. rival Goldman Sachs, which had the top slot, Thomson Reuters data showed. Rosneft's jumbo loan raised $16.8 billion in 2012 and $13 billion earlier this year to finance the TNK-BP deal with banks including Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Citi, Credit Agricole, JP Morgan, Mizuho, Societe Generale and UniCredit. Soon after the deal closed, Rosneft planned a bond issue to refinance part of the loan. But the company turned instead to Russia's domestic bond market where big Russian banks such as Sberbank and VTB dominate. Rosneft is also doing an M&A deal, but plans to buy a local gas firm rather than sell off some of its own assets.