Financial Advisory Firms Rose in the Middle of Pandemic Economy (Q1 2021)

Days before, Financial Advisory Firms showed their revenues and transactions in the first quarter of the year through this report from Refinitiv which I had access to from M&A Teaser Newsletter. And everything was how everybody believed. Working with more volume of transactions with a limited staff team.

I often talk with employees from different M&A firms and everyone claims to me the same message. ''We are working more than pre-COVID. More deals and more transactions with a limited team. Partners are afraid to hire people because the situation is uncertain, but they should do it to increase our productivity and closed success deals''.

Currently, I'm on the other side trying to get an opportunity as a junior analyst is struggling due to the high competitive demand and limited offer of graduate programs.

Neither, I want to express my opinion about the last articles which are appearing in different newspapers since some Analysts 1 from JP Morgan leaked an internal report about working conditions. I cannot be objective with an opinion out of the industry.

Global Ranking

Refinitiv published how Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley are leading the global ranking firms as usual with up to 400 deals and almost $900 M of value together. I'm surprised by how neither Big4 Firm is on the global top 25 in this first quarter.

Also, this period has experienced an increase of 33% respect previous year, led by China, US and United Kingdom.

In the graph below, you can check how the tech industry has an important impact in the overall deals.

Spanish Ranking

In my country, it's interesting to see how Rothschild closed 3 deals with a value transaction of $5,4 M. Nearby to Nomura with 2 deals completed for $5,1M and AZ Capital ($3,4 M).

The king of transaction is PwC with 20 deals completed far from the next top 3 EY and AZ Capital with 9 and 6 respectively.

Big4 Spanish Ranking

Deloitte is leading the ranking with a notorious increase in value of transactions regarding the other 3 firms ($5 M) followed by PwC ($2,8 M), KPMG ($246 K) and EY ($128 K). However it's not the firm with more deals completed (4) whereas PwC completed 20 deals.

This shows us how PwC has worked through more transactions than the rest of firms, but that does not mean create more value than others. Any way, PwC is always on the top of the number of deals. For that, I think that PwC is a good place to work in earlier careers instead of firms with lower workflow.
From this perspective, I can say that EY suffered a high decrease in their deals respect the previous year ($1,4 M value of transactions within 24 deals).