loss of bragging rights if their places in the rankings of the year's top mergers advisers drop as a result.

The planned $39 billion acquisition -- which was the biggest deal announced this year -- had been prominent feathers in the caps of two boutique investment banks, Greenhill & Company and Evercore Partners, underscoring how they have been able to compete with the bulge-bracket firms for advisory assignments. Both firms served as advisers to AT&T.

For Greenhill, the abandonment of the deal will be keenly felt: the firm drops to 35 from 13 in the rankings of advisers on United States deals, according to a preliminary calculation of Thomson Reuters data.

But big firms will also feel the loss. JPMorgan, which advised AT&T, and Morgan Stanley, which advised Deutsche Telekom, had been neck-and-neck at the top of the United States league table. Now rival Goldman Sachs, previously No. 3, will jump up to take the American crown.

(Goldman was absent from the AT&T deal because of its work for Sprint Nextel.)

Worldwide, Goldman has a clear lead at the top of the advising ranks, with Morgan Stanley as runner-up and JPMorgan Chase as No. 3

The other investment banks to advise Deutsche Telekom were Citigroup, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank.

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