Top 10 middle market investment banks closing deals with PE firms in 2025

Large, brand-name investment banks are increasingly active further down market. That shift raises a natural set of questions for private equity firms, especially leaner platforms: 

Using Private Equity Info’s M&A Research Database, we examined platform acquisitions in the middle market (approximately $5–$75 million in enterprise value) to understand which advisors are winning mandates and what their activity signals about future deal flow. 

Why big banks are moving down market 

The increased presence of well-known banks in the middle market reflects two structural realities of today’s deal environment: 

Platform scarcity at the upper end has pushed banks to pursue higher-volume, lower-EV transactions to maintain deal flow. 
Repeatable sponsor strategies, particularly buy-and-build models, create predictable pipelines of future work once a platform is placed. 

For PE firms, this does not necessarily mean increased risk. In fact, it often signals the opposite. Banks are prioritizing sponsors with clear growth playbooks, even at smaller fund sizes, because those platforms tend to generate follow-on add-on activity. 

Why platform deals are an early signal of future M&A 

Platform acquisitions are rarely one-off events. By analyzing a sponsor’s historical platform growth strategy, bankers can infer whether add-on acquisitions are likely to follow. 

For example: 

Sponsors with a history of fragmented-market rollups tend to pursue multiple add-ons within 12–24 months of a platform close. 
Banks advising on the initial platform gain early visibility into that roadmap, making platform activity a leading indicator of future deal flow. 

This is why platform transactions, rather than add-ons, are the clearest signal of which banks and sponsors are positioning themselves for sustained M&A activity. 

Top 10 Middle Market Investment Banks by Number of Platform Deals (2025) 

Based on platform transactions advised for PE firms in the middle market: 

1. Houlihan Lokey (Los Angeles, CA) 
2. Lincoln International (Chicago, IL) 
3. William Blair & Company (Chicago, IL) 
4. Raymond James Financial (St. Petersburg, FL) 
5. Robert W. Baird & Co. (Milwaukee, WI) 
6. Jefferies (New York, NY) 
7. Guggenheim Securities (New York, NY) 
8. Clearwater International (London, UK) 
9. Piper Sandler Companies (Minneapolis, MN) 
10. Harris Williams (Richmond, VA) 

Note: While we track add-on acquisitions separately, this ranking reflects platform deals only, as they best indicate future transaction velocity. 

Sector concentration: broad, not narrow 

We also analyzed whether these platform transactions clustered in specific industries. As expected, middle market deal activity in 2025 remained broadly diversified across sectors rather than concentrated in a few verticals, reinforcing the idea that sponsor strategy, not industry selection alone, is driving banker engagement. 

What this means for smaller PE firms 

For PE firms with fewer than 50 employees, the takeaway is not that competition is intensifying across the board, but that clarity of strategy matters more than scale. Banks are increasingly willing to work down market when they see: 

A repeatable platform thesis 
A credible add-on roadmap 
Signals of sustained deal flow beyond a single transaction 

Those attributes can level the playing field with much larger funds.