MM bankers in M&A, how often do you get the chance to work on a merger?

From my personal experience on M&A in the MM space, it’s very rare to see mergers of two equals. I’m curious to see how many mergers you’ve seen in the MM space. Is MM M&A pure sell-side M&A with maybe 20% buy-side advisory?

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I’ve never worked on a merger in MM or even seen it done by a competitor. Your 80% / 20% split is accurate across the group. Even if you do get staffed on a buyside they are much lower probability of success since you don’t know if your client will have the highest bid. In other words, there’s a good chance you complete your MM M&A stint with only closed sellsides to your name.
There’s not many banks advising on public buying public transactions. That’s what I call a merger, even if they aren’t really the same size, because that’s the situation where you use a merger model.

 

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