2025 US M&A Q1 Table
From Bloomberg as of the end of March. Think Bloomberg is considered the best data source, so wanted to paste it in; you will get slightly different results based on what site you use because of how deals are classified regionally or sector-wise. Only putting in the top 15 for the ease of my typing out and rounded to the nearest hundredth million:
- GS - 200.9 Bn EV across 58 deals
- JPM - 200.5 Bn EV across 54 deals
- MS - 193.1 Bn EV across 39 deals
- Citi - 115.3 Bn EV across 31 deals
- CVP - 86.7 Bn EV across 23 deals
- Barclays - 76.2 Bn EV across 17 deals
- WF - 68.9 Bn EV across 15 deals
- UBS - 56.1 Bn EV across 17 deals
- Lazard - 52.9 Bn EV across 18 deals
- EVR - 44.2 Bn EV across 20 deals
- Jef - 37.2 Bn EV across 37 deals
- BoFA - 32.3 Bn EV across 19 deals
- Credit Agricole - 17.0 Bn EV across 2 deals (clearly the outlier here)
- PJT - 13.9 Bn EV across 10 deals
- RBC - 12.5 Bn EV across 20 deals
Worrying signs for DB after a relatively strong 2024 and more aggressive IB hiring than DB has seen in a very long time. Also worrying signs for BoFA, but think deal attribution for Bloomberg for them has to be a bit weird since they did the Wiz deal. Will still say Bloomberg is the best platform for overall tracking since it's the finance sector's largest data provider by far, but not sure what is happening there. Very weak showing for RBC, has fallen behind both WF and UBS + remains behind Jef in the LTM and since 1/1/2024 league table rankings, despite their marketing of being a rapidly growing platform.
I have always heard that Evercore, CVP, Lazard and other EBs do the biggest deals and have large presence in the M&A side.
But from this table, Evercore and Lazard falls behind Barclays, UBS and Wells Fargo. And this is not including ECM or DCM.
I’m genuinely curious as to whether this is normal or did the EBs (other than CVP) have a terrible quarter?
I am an MBA associate so I don’t know much about the industry yet. So any insight will be appreciated!
b/c some of these banks will get credits on m&a deals due to providing the financing. they did very little work and get very little fees but they can point to league tables and call themselves a leading player in m&a. sorting by actual fees, would expect the EBs to pull ahead heavily compared to banks like UBS/WF and to a lesser extent Barc
Yes, they do larger deals — they just run leaner teams. So even if they're lower on league tables, the analyst experience is often stronger. That’s normal. The only EBs regularly in the top 10 are EVR and CVP, who are just a cut above in the boutique world.
League tables often reflect lending relationships, not just M&A work. Many banks get M&A fee credit (aka “tips”) from companies or sponsors they’ve supported on the lending side, especially in sponsor deals where banks that lead financing often get rewarded with advisory fees.
The idea that these are “very little fees” isn’t accurate. If you’re leading FA to a sponsor, the M&A tip can be sizable. Indeed, non-lead advisors usually get less, but it’s still real money.
Also, I wouldn’t group UBS or Barclays with WF. Barc and UBS still lead M&A deals. WF is growing but doesn't lead much M&A yet. RBC is another story, a lot of their M&A credit comes from commercial lending, and their actual M&A practice is smaller than it looks.
UBS and Barc, by contrast, even for their flow based on financing stuff, get their fees more from LevFin relationships, which involve more deal work (particularly relating to sponsor new money loans as leads; as both UBS and Barc are stronger on the Sponsors side of the LevFin world) than commercial lending, and are more relevant to IBD.
Thank you very much. This is very insightful!
What about laz
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