2026 Chicago Rankings

It's hard to compare BB to MM to EB in Chicago since they all have niches, what I learned from recruiting primarily in the city.

S+ - GS IND, JPM IND, LAZ RX

S - GHL IND M&A, EVR IND M&A, HL RX

A+ - GUGG PEAG, GS CMG, JPM MM M&A, WB

A - BOFA IND, CITI IND, GUGG IND, PWP IND, MOE

B - BARC (services & tech), BMO IND, Baird, HL

C - RJ, JEFF M&A, UBS (services), LAZ HC, Lincoln

D - Solomon, Piper, Cantor, Cain

E - Deutsche (IND; Chemicals), BOFA EGRC, BGL, Truist, Stout, Macquarie (Software)

PJT has a 4-5 person office, Rothschild lost its presence. Lots of micro-offices that still get deals.

54 Comments
 

Lincoln industrials is on par with half the industrials groups you have listed. 

Why are y’all so obsessed with rankings? Lol

 

I don’t have a dog in this fight as I’m currently at an EB (though Lincoln CAG reached out to me regarding building out their RX practice), but this just doesn’t really seem accurate. I’m new to this site and it’s seriously bizarre how bifurcated people think the market is. This “everything that’s not a household name only churns dog work” kind of attitude is really sad and unrealistic tbh. I spoke to a friend of a friend who recently left Lincoln’s industrials team and he said he didn’t work on anything lower than around $700mm EV in his time there and closed a few over $1b. They also just worked on a $10b deal. Meanwhile, I have friends at BBs who left their analyst years having closed a single deal. 

 
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This narrative of MM banks only doing $2M EBITDA companies is pushed by sophomores in college that have never actually worked and parrot this site. Am at a top MM name (albeit squarely MM) and our MDs straight up aren’t allowed to pitch or pursue names that are 4-5x as big as this “$40M EV” comment above. Our team pretty routinely works on $1B+ mandates and I have never been staffed on a deal smaller than $200-300M. Obviously it’s not BB or EB sized deals, nobody is trying to argue that - but it’s pretty funny to see “prospects” on here shitting on MM (a space where, btw, most of the top BBs that freshmen on this forum touch themselves to have been trying to move into and displace with dedicated MM teams in recent years).

 

Agree directionally but closer than you think, HL Chi focuses pretty heavily on manufacturing and not the headline bks that NY/LA get

 

I thought JPM M&A Chi was only somewhat MM - like half MM, half regular large cap & sometimes cross staffed with NY?

 

Goldman CMG and JPM M&A are primarily to get middle-market deal flow. They don’t cross-staff too often and its a lot of sponsors deals. They are ranked highly because they historically exit better than typical chicago MM into other EB’s or buy-side

 

Gugg wb moe BofA need to be moved down for this to be accurate. Bofa and moe are coverage shops not same as nyc

 

Gugg T&S is the same as Gugg PEAG, just an updated name. WF groups prob both D/E tier anyways

 

what are the names of the micro-offices and where can i find a list of the ones in chicago

 

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