The investment banking industry is tiered. At the top, the bulge bracket consists of the largest, most diversified global firms that serve the biggest clients on the biggest deals. The traditional bulge bracket today is Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citi, and depending on who you ask, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, UBS, and Credit Suisse (the last now absorbed into UBS after the 2023 emergency takeover).
Elite boutiques
Below the bulge bracket, elite boutiques are advisory-focused firms that punch far above their weight in M&A and restructuring. Lazard, Evercore, Centerview, Moelis, Rothschild, PJT Partners, Houlihan Lokey, and Perella Weinberg sit in this tier. They have no balance sheet to speak of, no trading floors, and no underwriting. Just advisory. They compete with the bulge bracket on the largest deals because their senior bankers, almost all former bulge-bracket MDs, bring deep client relationships and judgment without the conflicts of interest that come with a balance sheet.
Middle market
The middle market covers Jefferies, Stifel, Piper Sandler, Raymond James, William Blair, Baird, and similar firms. They serve mid-sized companies (broadly $50M to $1B enterprise value) that are too small for the bulge bracket to focus on but large enough to need full-service advisory and capital-raising. Jefferies in particular has grown aggressively and now competes with the bulge bracket on a meaningful share of deals.
League tables and regional specialists
League tables — published by Bloomberg, Refinitiv, and Dealogic — rank banks by deal volume in M&A advisory, equity underwriting, and debt underwriting. Senior management cares about league-table position because it drives client perception and the fee pool. The honest truth is that league tables are partly an arms race: banks negotiate hard for credits on deals where they did marginal work, because relative position matters.
Outside the global tiers, every major financial centre has regional specialists. Standard Chartered and Investec in emerging markets. Renaissance Capital in Africa, the CIS, and emerging markets. Numis (acquired by Deutsche Bank in 2023) historically in UK small and mid caps. EFG Hermes in MENA. Stanbic and Renaissance in sub-Saharan Africa. The economics differ by geography but the structure rhymes.
Exercise
A Kenyan-listed industrial company is preparing to sell a USD 800m subsidiary in a controlled auction. The CFO is debating which advisor to hire and asks for your input. The shortlist: (a) Goldman Sachs, (b) Lazard, (c) Renaissance Capital, (d) Stanbic Bank Kenya. Walk through the strengths and trade-offs of each, and recommend a likely structure. Note: the auction targets bidders from Europe, the Gulf, and South Africa.