‍Investment banks to focus on the middle market

As evidenced by recent poor performances of advisory units at large investment banks, M&A bankers who focus on large cap targets are facing a difficult environment. As such, Whitney Partners sees more bulge-bracket banks looking to the mid-market, like Bank of America began doing in the U.S. late last year. The headhunter sees big banks like Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan mixing it up with mid-market specialists including William Blair, RW Baird, and Harris Williams, among others. How they do so will be depend on each bank's strategy.

“The big firms must weigh whether to convert large cap bankers to middle market specialists, or whether to poach from their competitors,” wrote Alexis Dufresne, a director at Whitney Partners. Bankers working at firms that tend to focus on the mid-market certainly hope it’s the latter.

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