Goldman Sachs and Houlihan Lokey have emerged as the leading mergers and acquisitions (M&A) financial advisers in North America by value and volume, respectively, for the first three quarters of 2025.
As per an analysis of GlobalData’s Financial Deals Database, Goldman Sachs achieved its top position in the value chart by advising on deals worth a total of $369bn. Houlihan Lokey led the volume table by advising on a total of 159 deals.
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GlobalData lead analyst Aurojyoti Bose said: “There was a massive jump in the total value of deals advised by Goldman Sachs during Q1-Q3 2025 compared to Q1-Q3 2024. Resultantly, its ranking by value also improved from the second position during Q1-Q3 2024 to the top position in the corresponding period in 2025.
“Goldman Sachs advised on 66 billion-dollar deals during Q1-Q3 2025 that also included seven mega deals valued more than $10bn. Involvement in these big-ticket deals helped it top the chart.
“Moreover, Goldman Sachs was also among the only three advisers with triple-digit deal volume and occupied the second position by volume during Q1-Q3 2025. Meanwhile, Houlihan Lokey, which was the top adviser by volume during Q1-Q3 2024, also managed to retain its leadership position by this metric during Q1-Q3 2025.”
In terms of volume, JP Morgan took the third spot with 110 deals, followed by Jefferies with 81 deals, and Evercore with 79 deals.
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By GlobalDataMorgan Stanley got the second position in the value table, by advising on deals worth $340.7bn. It was followed by JP Morgan with $319.9bn, Wells Fargo with $248.7bn, and Citi with $223.1bn.
GlobalData’s league tables are based on the real-time tracking of thousands of company websites, advisory firm websites and other reliable sources available on the secondary domain. A dedicated team of analysts monitors all these sources to gather in-depth details for each deal, including adviser names.
To ensure further robustness to the data, the company also seeks submissions of deals from leading advisers.
