Aerospace & Defense IB

Generally, Aero & Defense IB tends to be a lot more MM and mid-cap focused because the large-cap space is already pretty consolidated and faces a lot of antitrust issues with further consolidation (ex. Lockheed's acquisition of Aerojet Rocketdyne was blocked based on competition concerns).

In the large-cap space, GS, Evercore, MS, and Citi are usually on the rare deal. Citi's usually doing buy-side advising with their financing capabilities, while the other 3 are a mix of sell-side and buy-side advisory.

In the mid-cap/upper MM space, Jefferies and Lazard are the two strongest players. Lazard does a lot of sponsor sell-sides and has a strong coverage of the European A&D players. Jefferies does a fair mix of strategic and sponsor deals, and is particularly strong in government services, aviation, and space. It should be noted that Lazard just lost one of their core US A&D seniors to PWP though.

Baird isn't exactly A&D, but rather defense & gov services. Their team is quite strong in the government services space (poached the gov services bankers from HL), and tend to sit on the opposite side of the table of Jefferies on a substantial portion of gov services deals. They don't do a whole lot of aerospace deals though.

In the lower-MM space, HL is a power player. They churn out lower-MM sponsor sell-sides, and reloaded quite well after losing some seniors to Baird by acquiring an A&D boutique.

Other players that are solid in the space but not particularly notable are PWP, CVP, and Rothschild. Rothschild tends to have much better A&D deal flow in Europe. PWP has a couple of solid A&D seniors and just poached a senior from Lazard. CVP has some large A&D clients wrapped around their fingers, but don't do a whole lot of deals.

Also, most banks have their A&D practices in their Industrials groups. The exceptions are Jefferies (located in CLT), Lazard (located in LA), Baird (located in DC), HL (located in DC), and RJ (Also in DC iirc).