The Goldman Sachs & JPMorgan bankers having an ok-ish 2023
You don’t need a crystal ball to know that the economy, and bankers too, are straight up not having a great time in 2023. But that doesn’t mean everyone’s suffering in the same way.
We’ve looked at data from Dealogic, the market intelligence provider, to see which M&A teams have had the most successful 2023YTD so far, compared to 2019, the last normal year for the economy (before 2020’s lockdown-recession, 2021’s insane rebound, and 2022’s war-recession).
Dealogic's rankings for the top five investment banks by sector (in the top five industries by M&A fees) have only two names that appear on every list this year: Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan. Other banks do okay: Bank of America appears in four of the lists, and Morgan Stanley in three. But Goldman and JPM reign supreme.
Goldman Sachs is the top investment bank for technology (the biggest single industry producing M&A fees), energy & natural resources, and industrials. It also came second for healthcare and financial institutions.
JPMorgan is the top bank for financial institutions-related M&A, the second best for industrials, third for technology, and fourth for both healthcare and energy & natural resources.
Granted, the actual fees produced are an extremely mixed bag. Fees earned from M&A advisory deals across key sectors were almost flat in the first half of 2023 vs the same period of 2019 (down just 2.2%), with the highest rise in business services (which has seen a 45% increase in fees) and the biggest fall in consumer & retail M&A (which has seen a 21% fall).
The best-placed teams at Goldman and JPMorgan this year are healthcare and technology at GS and energy and natural resources and FIG at JPMorgan. Goldman’s healthcare and technology teams are both well up on 2019 fees (7.5% and 13%, respectively) whilst its other teams are down, pretty harshly in some cases. JPMorgan’s energy & natural resources team, as well as the financial institutions (FIG) team, are both up, whilst the other three are down.
While these bankers at Goldman and JPMorgan are having a good year, though, their performane is nothing compared to that of a particular team at Centerview Partners. The boutique’s healthcare M&A revenues are up 155% since 2019, and although it isn’t in any other industry’s top five, it’s the biggest across the data provided.
Centerview’s healthcare team has some serious pedigree. Some of the partners at the firm covering the sector include Richard Girling, formerly Merrill Lynch’s global head of healthcare investment banking, Andrew Rymer, Goldman’s former healthcare M&A chief, and Michael Muntner, former co-head of Credit Suisse’s healthcare group in the Americas.
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