Is BIG 4 M&A picking up all over?

Hi

I currently work in Big 4 corporate finance in India. These guys are ramping up their teams and are doing fairly decently (for whatever the market is worth).

The biggest issue is that, due to the size of the economy and smaller balance sheets of the companies, there are far and few $500mn+ PE Fundraise or M&A's which take place in India. Therefore, the bulge brackets don't concentrate on building large teams here as there isn't enough in fees to be earned.

However because of the Member Firms setup and Partnership structure of the BIG 4, it's worth chasing the $20-250mn deals for them. Apart from Avendus and a few others there aren't too many well known boutique banks giving competition too.

It made me wonder how have the BIG 4's started to do across the world as a place to run investment banking style mandates from (apart from IPO's obviously).

Have they started growing and gaining respect for closing deals? Or is it impossible for them to compete with well established boutiques? Wanted to start a discussion on this topic as somewhere I feel the BIG 4's might be picking up in this space and could be worth seriously considering as a long term career option.

Any info on their team sizes, hiring's, employee profiles and approx comp at Analyst and Associate level etc. for US and UK would be highly appreciated.

Thanks!