Mega-deal fees concentrating

Nine-figure advisory fees are no longer a one-off in mergers and acquisitions. Short Squeez counted six bank mandates worth more than $100 million in 2025 and two more in early 2026. (x.com) Those payouts are tied to a small number of very large transactions that actually closed, not just deals that were announced. Walgreens Boots Alliance completed its sale to Sycamore Partners on Aug. 28, 2025 after announcing the transaction on March 6, 2025, turning one of the year’s biggest buyouts into fee-paying revenue for advisers. (sec.gov) A merger adviser usually gets most of its compensation only if the deal closes. On smaller deals that success fee can be a few million dollars, but on transactions worth tens of billions, the same structure can push a single mandate above $100 million. (mnacommunity.com) The backdrop is a rebound in big-ticket dealmaking. EY said U.S. corporate M&A in March 2026 showed deals above $100 million rising 43% year over year in value, while deals above $5 billion rose 82% in value, extending a 2025 pattern in which value outpaced volume. (ey.com) That means fee pools are being shaped by scale more than by the raw number of assignments. The Financial Times league tables showed global announced M&A totaling about $10.6 trillion as of March 31, 2026, and the gains were concentrated in sectors such as financials and healthcare where a few very large deals can dominate rankings. (ft.com) The firms best placed to capture that money are the banks already hired on the biggest boards’ most sensitive mandates. Independent advisers such as Centerview, Evercore, Lazard and PJT compete with bulge-bracket banks including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan and Bank of America for those roles, and one closed mega-deal can swing a quarter’s advisory revenue. (ft.com) (jpmorgan.com) Bank earnings already show how uneven that payoff can be. Bloomberg reported in January 2026 that Citigroup’s M&A revenue rose more than 50% in 2025 to a record, while JPMorgan’s growth in that business was far slower, underscoring how a handful of mandates can reshape league-table momentum. (bloomberg.com) The competitive effect is straightforward: more banks may be touching nine-figure fees, but the money is still clustering around the same narrow set of firms that win boardroom mandates on the very largest deals. If 2026 keeps producing more closings like 2025, advisory revenue will keep looking less broad-based and more winner-take-most. (x.com) (ey.com)