Middle Market M&A Landscape - Who Are The 'Best' Investment Banks

I'm trying to establish a better understanding of the best mid-market players for M&A, and would love help building out / refining the list below (US focused). I understand that specific groups at different firms could be viewed more or less favorably, but want to approach this as more of a generalization of M&A capabilities. Best is clearly subjective, but thinking about it as a sort of aggregation of many of the factors people look for (comp, deal flow, exits, 'prestige', current momentum, etc.). Also, there are obviously tons of great firms out there that do M&A in the middle market, but the goal is to focus on the top true middle market firms and their M&A advisory capabilities (I intentionally did not include WF for example). Tell me who else is important to add and where they should go:

Tier 1: Jefferies

Tier 2: William Blair, Houlihan Lokey, Harris Williams, Baird, Piper Sandler

Tier 3: Solomon, Raymond James, Stifel 

Tier 4: Cantor Fitzgerald, TD Cowen, Lincoln, Macquarie, Oppenheimer

Tier 5: Truist, Brown Gibbons Lang, Stephens

7 Comments
 

bump+ for M&A specifically I'd bump stuff like opco, cantor, and stifel down feel like I see them on small ECM a lot more than m&a. Could add firms like Canaccord, Capstone, DC advisory etc for m&a specifically.

not in the field yet so someone w more experience would have a far better opinion**

 

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