On Wall Street, few titles carry as much weight as “rainmaker” — the banker who can land a multibillion-dollar merger, shepherd it through regulatory minefields, and collect a fee that justifies a compensation package most corporate executives would envy. In 2025, as deal activity rebounds from a prolonged slump, a select group of merger advisors at Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and a handful of boutique firms have emerged as the most sought-after names in corporate boardrooms worldwide.
A comprehensive ranking published by Business Insider identifies the top mergers-and-acquisitions bankers shaping the current deal cycle, drawing on interviews with senior executives, rival bankers, corporate boards, and private-equity dealmakers. The list reflects not just who advised on the largest transactions of the past year, but who holds the relationships and institutional knowledge to keep winning mandates in a market that is growing more competitive by the quarter.
A Market Reawakened After Years of Drought
The M&A market in 2025 stands in sharp contrast to the torpor that defined much of 2023 and the first half of 2024. Rising interest rates, antitrust uncertainty under the Biden administration, and geopolitical volatility combined to suppress deal volumes to their lowest levels in a decade. But a shift in the regulatory posture following the change in administration, combined with pent-up demand from private-equity sponsors sitting on record levels of dry powder, has reignited activity across virtually every sector.
Global announced M&A volume in the first quarter of 2025 surged past $1 trillion, according to data from Dealogic, marking the strongest opening quarter since 2022. Technology, healthcare, energy, and financial services have led the charge, with several transformative deals already announced or in advanced stages of negotiation. Against this backdrop, the bankers who maintained relationships and pipeline during the lean years are now reaping outsized rewards.
Goldman Sachs: The Franchise That Refuses to Yield
Goldman Sachs has long been synonymous with M&A advisory dominance, and the 2025 cycle is no exception. The firm’s investment banking division, led by global co-heads of M&A, continues to advise on many of the year’s most high-profile transactions. According to the Business Insider rankings, several Goldman partners appear among the top dealmakers, reflecting the firm’s deep bench and its ability to win mandates on both sides of the Atlantic.
What distinguishes Goldman’s M&A practice, according to people familiar with the matter, is the firm’s emphasis on senior-level coverage. Partners at Goldman are expected to maintain direct relationships with CEOs and board chairs, not merely CFOs and heads of corporate development. This approach, while resource-intensive, has allowed Goldman to win advisory roles on contested deals where trust and discretion are paramount. The firm advised on some of the largest transactions announced in late 2024 and early 2025, including several cross-border deals in the technology and energy sectors.
JPMorgan’s Ascent and the Power of a Full-Service Platform
JPMorgan Chase has steadily closed the gap with Goldman Sachs in M&A advisory over the past five years, and the 2025 rankings reflect the bank’s growing clout. Under the leadership of its investment banking team, JPMorgan has won mandates on some of the year’s most complex transactions, leveraging — or rather, drawing on — its unmatched balance sheet and lending capabilities to offer clients a package that pure-play advisory firms cannot match.
The bank’s ability to provide committed financing alongside strategic advice has become an increasingly important differentiator, particularly in large leveraged buyouts where private-equity sponsors need certainty of execution. Several JPMorgan bankers featured prominently in the Business Insider list, with sources citing the firm’s willingness to deploy capital as a key reason for its success in winning competitive mandates. The strategy has drawn criticism from boutique rivals who argue it creates conflicts of interest, but corporate clients and sponsors have shown little inclination to penalize the bank for offering more services.
Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, and the Battle for the Next Tier
Morgan Stanley remains a formidable competitor in M&A advisory, particularly in sectors like technology, media, and telecommunications, where the firm has historically maintained strong coverage teams. The bank’s advisory revenues have benefited from a rebound in tech deal activity, including several large-scale software and semiconductor transactions. Key Morgan Stanley bankers named in the rankings have been involved in advising both strategic acquirers and financial sponsors on deals exceeding $10 billion in enterprise value.
Wells Fargo, meanwhile, represents a more surprising entrant in the upper echelons of the M&A league tables. The bank has invested heavily in building out its investment banking capabilities over the past several years, hiring senior bankers from rivals and expanding its sector coverage. While Wells Fargo still trails the bulge-bracket triumvirate of Goldman, JPMorgan, and Morgan Stanley in total advisory revenue, the bank has made notable inroads in middle-market and upper-middle-market transactions, particularly in industrials, healthcare, and financial institutions. The inclusion of Wells Fargo bankers in the rankings signals that the firm’s long-term investment in advisory talent is beginning to pay dividends.
Boutique Firms and the Enduring Appeal of Independent Advice
The 2025 deal cycle has also been kind to independent advisory firms. Centerview Partners, Evercore, Lazard, PJT Partners, and Perella Weinberg Partners continue to win prominent roles on major transactions, often serving as lead advisors to boards of directors in contested or sensitive situations. The appeal of these firms rests on the perception — and often the reality — that their advice is free from the conflicts inherent in large universal banks that also lend money, trade securities, and manage assets.
Centerview, in particular, has cemented its reputation as the go-to advisor for the most complex and consequential deals. The firm, founded by Blair Effron and Robert Pruzan, has been involved in a disproportionate share of the largest transactions announced in 2025 relative to its size. Evercore, under the continued influence of its founder Roger Altman and a deep roster of senior managing directors, has similarly maintained a strong presence in the rankings. These boutiques have benefited from a trend among corporate boards to hire independent advisors alongside — or instead of — large banks, particularly in situations involving conflicts, activism, or hostile approaches.
The Private-Equity Factor and What Drives Sponsor Loyalty
Private-equity firms remain among the most prolific generators of M&A advisory fees, and the relationships between buyout shops and their preferred bankers are among the most carefully cultivated on Wall Street. The Business Insider rankings highlight several bankers whose reputations were built largely on their ability to serve as trusted advisors to the largest sponsors, including Blackstone, KKR, Apollo Global Management, and Carlyle Group.
What sponsors value most, according to people involved in the selection process, is a banker’s ability to identify proprietary deal opportunities, provide accurate and defensible valuations, and manage complex auction processes with discretion. Speed of execution matters enormously in a market where competitive dynamics can shift within days. Bankers who can mobilize teams across geographies and product groups — coordinating financing, tax structuring, regulatory analysis, and shareholder communications simultaneously — hold a distinct advantage. The current environment, with its compressed timelines and heightened regulatory scrutiny, has placed a premium on these capabilities.
Regulatory Winds and the Outlook for the Rest of 2025
The regulatory environment has shifted meaningfully since the start of 2025. The Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice, under new leadership, have signaled a more permissive stance toward large-scale horizontal mergers than their predecessors, though antitrust enforcement remains active in areas involving artificial intelligence, data privacy, and platform dominance. In Europe, the European Commission continues to scrutinize cross-border deals with significant market-share implications, creating opportunities for bankers with expertise in multi-jurisdictional regulatory strategy.
For the bankers atop the 2025 rankings, the second half of the year promises to be extraordinarily busy. Several mega-deals are in various stages of negotiation, and the backlog of private-equity exits — delayed by years of valuation uncertainty — is beginning to clear. Industry observers expect full-year 2025 M&A volume to approach or exceed $4 trillion globally, which would represent the strongest year since 2021. The bankers who can sustain their pace through this cycle will not only generate enormous fees for their firms but will solidify their positions as the most influential advisors in global finance.
The rankings published by Business Insider serve as a snapshot of a profession that rewards longevity, relationship depth, and an almost preternatural ability to read the intentions of CEOs, board members, and rival bidders. In a business where a single phone call can be worth hundreds of millions of dollars in fees, the bankers who make the list understand that their most valuable asset is not their financial modeling skills or their knowledge of tax law — it is the trust they have earned, deal by deal, over careers spanning decades.