In 2024, mergers and acquisitions (M&A) volume increased across all three regions – Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific – driven by lower interest rates, non-core corporate divestitures, and an increase in financial sponsor-led activity.

Goldman Sachs displayed its dominance by maintaining its pole position in the US and gaining one spot each in Europe and Asia-Pacific, as per Mergermarket’s full-year financial advisory rankings. It was the only firm to record more than USD 1trn in deal volume across 430 deals, up 13% year-on-year (YoY). Though Goldman worked with targets on a majority of its deals, its largest deal was its buyside advise to Canadian retailer Alimentation Couche-Tard for its pending purchase of Seven & I Holdings for USD 58bn.

Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan, as they have historically done, battled it out for the second spot, with the former slipping ahead by a slim margin. Morgan Stanley saw a 13% YoY increase in volume to USD 856bn while JPMorgan’s numbers were flat at about USD 805bn, compared to the year prior. Morgan Stanley lost its number one spot in Asia-Pacific from 2023 but gained the gold in Japan and the Middle East & Africa. JPMorgan lost ground in Middle East & Africa and Latin America, where it had held the pole position in 2023.

A similar trend was seen among all three top players – they each assisted the target/vendor between 57-60% of the time, while a chunk of their deals came from the following three sectors: computers, financial services, and energy. Meanwhile, Lazard and Jefferies were the only two new firms in the top ten, up 58% and 81% by volume respectively, from the year prior.

In terms of deal count, PwC and Deloitte continued to dominate first and second positions with 727 and 623 deals, respectively. PwC also scored the highest for deal count in Europe and Asia-Pacific while Houlihan Lokey had the highest number of deals in the US.