2026 Q1 Americas M&A League Table Standings
Top M&A Advisors by Deal Value (USD mm)
- Goldman Sachs — $159,259 (28.7%) | 49 deals
- J.P. Morgan — $116,838 (21.0%) | 54 deals
- Citi — $82,255 (14.8%) | 22 deals
- Morgan Stanley — $68,532 (12.3%) | 42 deals
- Wells Fargo — $57,424 (10.3%) | 18 deals
- Centerview — $50,301 (9.1%) | 17 deals
- Evercore — $47,055 (8.5%) | 35 deals
- BofA Securities — $31,933 (5.8%) | 20 deals
- Jefferies — $19,781 (3.6%) | 32 deals
- Santander — $19,636 (3.5%) | 11 deals
- Perella Weinberg — $19,479 (3.5%) | 11 deals
- Moelis — $18,547 (3.3%) | 31 deals
- RBC — $14,567 (2.6%) | 13 deals
- Barclays — $14,082 (2.5%) | 16 deals
- Piper Sandler — $13,855 (2.5%) | 40 deals
- Guggenheim — $12,024 (2.2%) | 15 deals
- Qatalyst — $10,488 (1.9%) | 3 deals
- TD Securities — $9,661 (1.7%) | 18 deals
- Scotiabank — $8,707 (1.6%) | 7 deals
- Eastdil Secured — $6,937 (1.3%) | 1 deal
- Lazard — $6,913 (1.2%) | 18 deals
- Rothschild — $6,786 (1.2%) | 12 deals
- Stifel/KBW — $6,052 (1.1%) | 29 deals
- UBS — $5,719 (1.0%) | 14 deals
- Cohen & Co — $5,713 (1.0%) | 4 deals
- BMO Capital Markets — $5,085 (0.9%) | 14 deals
- Deutsche Bank — $4,703 (0.9%) | 9 deals
- Hall Chadwick — $4,499 (0.8%) | 1 deal
- Harris Williams — $4,450 (0.8%) | 20 deals
- National Bank of Canada — $4,099 (0.7%) | 4 deals
- Houlihan Lokey — $4,049 (0.7%) | 48 deals
- Baird — $3,820 (0.7%) | 23 deals
- Natixis — $3,750 (0.7%) | 9 deals
- Rabobank — $3,500 (0.6%) | 2 deals
- ING — $3,500 (0.6%) | 1 deal
- Mizuho — $3,500 (0.6%) | 4 deals
- Societe Generale — $3,500 (0.6%) | 1 deal
- Standard Chartered — $3,500 (0.6%) | 1 deal
- SMBC — $3,500 (0.6%) | 1 deal
- PEI Global — $3,450 (0.6%) | 1 deal
- Investec — $3,250 (0.6%) | 2 deals
- Cantor Fitzgerald — $2,811 (0.5%) | 3 deals
- KeyBanc — $2,305 (0.4%) | 9 deals
- Actinver — $1,978 (0.4%) | 1 deal
- EY — $1,720 (0.3%) | 6 deals
- Desjardins — $1,546 (0.3%) | 1 deal
- Alliance Global — $1,490 (0.3%) | 1 deal
- EC M&A — $1,469 (0.3%) | 1 deal
- PJT — $1,465 (0.3%) | 8 deals
- Raymond James — $1,450 (0.3%) | 22 deals
Key Notes by ChatGPT:
- BB dominance at the top: GS, JPM, Citi, and MS control ~76% of total deal value → still the go-to for mega-cap mandates
- Elite boutiques punching above weight: Centerview and Evercore rank top 7 → strong presence in high-quality, large-cap advisory
- Qatalyst as an outlier: ~$10.5B across just 3 deals → highest avg deal size (~$3.5B/deal), hyper-focused on mega tech M&A
- Houlihan Lokey volume vs value disconnect: 48 deals but only ~$4B → high-volume, middle-market / restructuring-driven model
- Piper Sandler quietly active: 40 deals with moderate value → strong MM franchise (especially FIG + healthcare)
- Wells Fargo surprisingly high: #5 by value → likely driven by balance sheet relationships and sponsor coverage
- Lazard & Rothschild relatively muted: ~$6–7B range → fewer mega-deals despite strong advisory reputations
- Clustered mid-tier banks: Mizuho, SMBC, ING, SocGen, etc. all around ~$3.5B → highly commoditized / relationship-driven tier
- PJT lower than expected: ~$1.5B across 8 deals → reflects restructuring focus and selective M&A mandates
- Clear split in business models:
- High value / low volume → Qatalyst, Centerview
- Balanced → GS, JPM, Evercore
- High volume / low value → Houlihan, Piper
→ reinforces that “deal experience” varies significantly across firms
what a comeback year for PWP
man it's been two months lol
pwp shills out of hibernation
It’s because of one $15B deal
Congrats on UBS!
Wow PJT M&A is dogshit?
Wells Fargo is paradise confirmed
GPT calling out HL for churning is hilarious lol
Virgin HL doing 48 deals vs hall Chadwick doing 1 deal and being higher
DB in the gutter
UBS > DB LOL
Citi ascendancy
Citi clearly a top 4 BB now.
Potentially could compete with the big 3 in a couple years if momentum continues. Top groups like IND/M&A/HC/FSG/Tech seem to carry the franchise - need to diversify and strengthen across the board it seems.
UBS and DB are no longer bulge brackets
Please define the term Bulge Bracket. Its not all about you over there.
It’s not about the size of the bulge, it’s about how you use it
So MOE/PWP > LAZ/PJT for M&A it seems
Is Laz the new Greenhill?
Yeah imma take Citi over PJT EVR LAZ MOE CVP...congrats on Greenhill, lmao
Also MOE and LAZ are like 1 deal away from each other lol.
I think Evercore and Centerview are truly a head above the rest
Can't believe how badly people are overreacting to 1 Quarter of Fees
UBS interns jump ship
Why is Santander so high?
How is Santander so high
Anyone have color on this?
Ex-CS people now at Santander.
Is this by announced deals? If so how come Paramount / Discovery doesn't get included here and skew a lot of the rankings?
LSEG had it counted as 2025 when I checked
Both LSEG and Dealogic count the deal to 2025 league table when the hostile takeover is announced, so they won't double count it to this year's table
Wells higher than BofA? Never thought I would see this
Congrats on WF!
is wells better?
I don’t think it’s that valuable to look at a single quarter’s worth of data for an m&a industry where the sales cycle is 24/36 months, especially for small firms that don’t cover the world. A firm like PJT is a whale hunter, and will always do well, even if their results look a bit like a sine wave.
UBS on the other hand, who does cover the world, begs a much larger conversation, their thesis on winning is not proving to be working
I agree it's not useful to look at one quarter in an industry with long sales cycles but how can you call them whale hunters when their average deal size is under $200 million?
I feel like this kind of validates that M&A is a side hustle for a shop that lives and dies on restructuring. From the admittedly few people I know who are PJT M&A, it sounds like pitch city.
Let me reiterate the fact that deals take 2-3 years to originate, land, execute and close. Just because they haven’t closed any large deals this quarter doesn’t mean they aren’t working on some of the largest and most complicated stuff.
That’s also a crazy statement to make when one look at their 10k would tell you otherwise, not to mention taubman is an M&A banker. I would expect anyone actually in the business who has seen PJT in and around deals would understand this implicitly.
Shitty bank no longer shitty?
What is this data based off of? Shouldn't the banks that worked on Paramount Warner (Allen, LT, etc.) automatically be in the top 5?
110 bn deal value is recorded to all the banks in last year's league table when the hostile takeover is announced. This ranking is from LSEG. You can check Dealogic too, neither do they double-count the 110bn deal to this year's league table too.
Hey guys - I have an offer from The Hall Chadwick and PJT and am in a dilemma about which offer to choose. From a prestige and ranking standpoint, it seems that The Hall Chadwick would be better but I like the culture at pjt more. Thoughts
Congrats on UBS!
What is the word with Santander at 10 is that legit?
It's a single quarter. They have taken the legacy CS sponsors team and are really aggressive on the LevFin side. A lot of their deals are effectively buy-side credits for being great aggressive lenders to sponsors. Drastic outperformance this quarter compared to past few. IB has a fairly long deal cycle, so very much a case of their deals happening to fall into this quarter. Better metric is full year stats or even 2-3 year combined stats.
Santander's US IB has really only been around for about two years, so there isn't enough data yet, even though YoY growth is very high. It will be interesting to see if they can keep that momentum in the US. With that said, I wonder if the 'Americas' data points include other LatAm countries as they are one of the top banks there?
This is just one quarter. Apparently, Santander acquired Webster Financial Corporation for $12.2 billion dollars, and so they obviously added Santander as one of the advisor and gave the credit, so it is very bloated
What's going on at MS? Why not closer to JPM / GS?
Also wondering this
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