Factset League Tables YTD-September
Hey all, just thought it'd be interesting to post the US and Global M&A League Tables for YTD-September from FactSet.
US League Table
Global League Table
Keep in mind that league tables are NOT 100% accurate (aka please don't turn this into another ranking thread). Also, note that the transaction value only includes disclosed transaction values, while total deals includes all announced deals (including undisclosed transaction values).
Thanks for the info, very helpful. Is there anyway to adjust so total deal only includes deals with disclosed transaction terms (so it matches with total transaction value)?
Global M&A league tables with only # of deals with disclosed transaction amounts.
yeah dude you gotta HC that into the excel backup so it ties. or just add "illustrative" to the title. duh.
Memes aside, RBC is doing very well in the US, but their lack of global presence is really showing (only $16B more in disclosed transaction value globally than in the US). Also surprised that Lazard is so low in US league tables.
Yeah suprised by Lazard too. But Qualayst is doing some good shit.
Interesting content, thx for posting. Just out of curiousity, is Moelis usually that low in total transaction value?
Moelis does a lot more sponsor advisory than strategic advisory compared to other EBs, and sponsor transactions tend to have undisclosed values a lot more, hence why Moelis's total disclosed value is a lot lower. Looking at the data, only 55% of Moelis's transactions have disclosed values, compared to 62% for Lazard, 69% for Evercore, 72% for PJT, and 83% for CVP and PWP.
What matters more? Deal count or value rankings?
Both. What really matters is your deal reps and exposure as an analyst (essentially deal count/IB analyst class size could serve as a decent proxy). I can tell you that deal size really doesn't matter that much and doesn't mean a better analyst experience. I'm at an EB that does everything from the $100M sell side to the mega-cap deal, and I've generally found that deals around the $700-$1.5B range have been the most enjoyable deals to work on.
What makes those deals more enjoyable for you?
sophisticated parties make for a more organized, professional process. fewer headaches. doesn't mean they don't exist, but it also means you're likely not going to be doing diligence requests and having to ask for the 40th time if there are any contracts or is the entire business run on handshakes.
Damn Allen & Co and Qatalyst are absolute beasts in their space.
For real, LionTree is killing it too.
Looking like Guggenheims killing Moelis
Moelis usually isn't that high in league tables. Their bread and butter has always been MM to mid-cap sponsor sell-sides, and have always been a volume shop like Jefferies or Lazard doing way more deals than the PJT/CVP-type firms.
Nvm
Very interesting, thanks for posting.
- Evercore seems to have solidified its status as "the Goldman of independent advisory firms"
- Jefferies is killing it, seems like it's solidly established itself below CS in North America over the past couple of years. International presence is still weaker than the BBs though.
- Allen & Co, Qatalyst, and LionTree are absolutely killing it in TMT
- WF's M&A deal flow still doesn't seem to have picked up compared to the past few years
- Greenhill has seemed to completely dropped off. I don't think they've been in top 50 in league tables since 2018 or so.
Yeah WF is a lower than I thought they'd be. I always thought of them as below RBC by a bit, but not by that much.
Wells is a financing bank, and until recently has been very content to stay there. Scharf has been pushing us to gain more M&A share, but that won't happen overnight
I think Rich handler just became a Billionaire.
Just saw this, always assume he was worth $100-150 million+. Had no clue he's amassed that much wealth.
Interesting to see the difference in number of deals between the EBs. You have PJT with 36 deals so far all the way to Rothschild, which may not be an EB in the US but I guess counts as a global EB, with 323 deals.
Is JPM usually higher than MS? I always thought MS was #2 in terms of transaction volume in the US, but maybe that's outdated.
driven by their balance sheet. they’ll provide financing for a deal, do no actual M&A advisory, but ask for M&A credit (and usually give better financing terms for it). so transaction value isn’t as good a proxy as revenues if you are looking for a metric that implies deal flow or potential bonus comp.
Completely off-topic but didn't BofA's IB division drop the ML name in 2019? If so, when will that name change start to reflect in the Industry (aka FactSet stop using BofA ML, people stop shortening BofA to BAML on WSO, etc)? Just curious because I feel like by 2014/15 few people used Wachovia to refer to WF's IBD brand.
I think it is slowly happening. The BAML name is a lot more sticky as BofA's kept it around a lot longer than WF kept Wachovia (I believe WF kept the Wachovia name for only 3 years), but I think there's been a very gradual transition (anecdotally at my BB fewer and fewer of the senior people are calling BofA by Merrill). Give it maybe 5 or more years and I think the BAML name may be gone.
Incredibly insightful, I really appreciate it! Could you maybe do the same thing for industries, specifically Tech and Healthcare?
This would be awesome!
Could anybody please pull league tables from other sources, eg. Bloomberg, to complement what was already posted?
Although it was already well known in Rothschild's case, it's interesting to see Lazard's disparity between their global M&A deal flow vs their U.S. deal flow.
Just thought it'd be interesting to post these 2007 Mergermarket M&A league tables I found.
Global
US
Interesting, thanks for posting! Surprising to see how little has changed, with Barc today roughly where Lehman was, and BofA roughly where Merrill was. Did not know that Wachovia was as strong as it was (for some reason I always had the impression Wachovia was where WF roughly is today back then). Interesting that Greenhill completely fell off, and Jeff and Guggenheim really were nowhere pre-GFC.
Seems like there was also a much larger distinction between BB and everything else back then. The BB field was pretty tight globally back then, with 1-9th occupied by BBs and all of them above $600B in transaction volume.
I thought a sizable portion of Guggenheim MDs today are ex-Bear Stearns?
So looking at the league tables RBC's been a "rising BB" since before the GFC huh?
This was an interesting post. Know a few people who were at Bear Stearns/CIBC back then (had no clue CIBC did fairly well back then honestly, Bear Stearns was a scrappy banker. A former IB analyst (left finance after working at Bear Stearns) said it was a very scrappy bank vs bigger banks. Often let hard workers get to better departments internally vs. hiring external candidates. Heard that although Blackstone M&A often wasn't in the top echelon of banks in M&A fees, it was one of the hardest interviews/positions to land. Their exits were absurd vs. most of the street.
You mean "Bear Stearns" toward the end of your post, instead of "Blackstone?"
Any idea why CIBC fell off the map?
Why do BAML and Citi have a bad reputation on this site if they are in top 5?
Do they have a bad reputation? BofA is almost universally considered #4 BB on this site.
I mean look at vault rankings those 2 are like pretty low and on this site all EBs are deemed more prestigious even though they are top 5 in deal value. I guess its deal value / head that matters.
I've never heard too much negative feedback on BAML. Citi gets a bad rep because they 'self own' somewhat consistently. Lots of stories about pitches destined to fail, dropped balls, missing out on deals for silly reasons (an MD repeatedly mispronouncing the client's name from one story I've heard). They also have below-average internal management - it can take months to get approval from finance / HR to replace an analyst who leaves for PE - even when most of a team leaves at the same time (which they've had to deal with).
Also, at least amongst (some of) the junior class, they jokingly call themselves 'Shitty Bank', which comes from the above + the fact that they routinely try to compete with GS/MS/JPM and lose out on mandates.
Bankers aren't usually the happiest bunch, but the Citi guys I've met seem to be some of the least happy - all of the pain of banking, with worse institutional support, and a handicap on exits and comp vs. the banks they consider their peers.
Citi pre 2008 had a pretty good reputation if I recall correctly. I think they were on par with JPM but obviously the mortgage crisis hit them hard and they never bounced back.
For more info here is the dealogic league tables as well (covers both global and us): http://graphics.wsj.com/investment-banking-scorecard/
The problem is it only goes 10 deep
Roths is higher in the US than I thought it would be
Goldman, wins again!
Lol. Goldman is never not going to be #1.
Thanks for this. Could anyone share the standings by industry - Tech, HC?
I think looking at this based on IB revenue is would be interesting as well.
Is there a place to see the median deal or something to that effect for different firms? I feel like a lot of these may be thrown off by a handful of big deals
Goldman had an avg. value of ~$3bln/deal YTD, compared to JPM's ~2.6bln/deal and MS' ~$3.3bln/deal. I think it's honestly fine to divide out the deal value by # of deals; all the top 3 banks hunt for 'whales,' and will be on 90-100% of mega caps. But also, they're all on the ~$100-1b deals -- at least for JPM & GS since those two have the Regional IB & Cross Markets groups to break into the mid-market. To the extent that deal size is influencing anything, it's the placement of the EBs imo. The gap between JP and Citi, for example, is really a lot of deal flow since Citi's average value per deal is about the same ($413,320 / 142 ~= 2.9b) as JPM's.
It seems PWP is having a really good year. Interested to hear if people think this is a one-off or if this will be a sustained thing
Sustained, they consistently do more and more deals despite such a small head count. With expected growth it’ll be interesting to see what they evolve into.
…
How do you pull these up in FactSet?
As two of the MM firms on the list why aren’t Piper Sandler and Houlian Lokey usually brought up as top MM firms compared to William Blair/Baird
Cum quam tempore et voluptatum accusantium totam. Eveniet quam reprehenderit officia quasi earum nam. Iusto rerum non id laudantium et.
See All Comments - 100% Free
WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something. Unlock with your email and get bonus: 6 financial modeling lessons free ($199 value)
or Unlock with your social account...
Ipsum necessitatibus accusamus veritatis quia ut et voluptate. Praesentium nostrum perferendis ea. Aspernatur illo a dolorem doloremque placeat et veritatis. Nobis nostrum et dolorem. Et aut est et voluptatibus ratione atque iure odit.
Ducimus nobis consequuntur alias eligendi. Repudiandae ut id dolor corporis rerum hic velit voluptatem. Sit eum rerum accusamus. Ullam et iusto quis odit nam autem. Nobis sed unde qui modi. Sed animi nisi aliquam.
Ut eligendi fugiat quas doloribus. Et qui voluptas sed corporis. Accusamus repellat veritatis reiciendis nemo. Corporis nisi repudiandae distinctio repellat ab et.
Necessitatibus aut ut quam voluptatem sed et sed. Sit modi est in in. Doloremque vel et id perferendis.