NEW YORK — Goldman Sachs led global merger-and-acquisition advisory rankings in 2025, working on $1.48 trillion in announced deals as Wall Street’s biggest transactions roared back, according to LSEG data. The rebound was fueled by a wave of $10 billion-plus mega-deals and stronger boardroom appetite for scale, while JPMorgan Chase & Co. finished No. 1 in overall investment-banking fees, Jan. 7, 2026.
By LSEG’s year-end tally, Goldman Sachs captured about 32% of the global market and advised on 38 of 68 mega-deals worth more than $10 billion, helping push the count to its highest level since records began in 1980, as detailed in a Reuters league-table report.
Goldman Sachs rides the mega-deal wave
The bank also led on M&A fee revenue, earning $4.6 billion in 2025, ahead of JPMorgan ($3.1 billion) and Morgan Stanley ($3 billion), the LSEG data show. Goldman Sachs global co-head of M&A Stephan Feldgoise called 2025 an “exceptional” year, citing a “ubiquity of capital” that made large transactions easier to finance and defend in the boardroom.
Even so, Goldman Sachs did not advise on the year’s two biggest transactions by value — including Union Pacific’s $88.2 billion purchase of Norfolk Southern — underscoring how broadly the fee pool was shared in a year when multiple banks and boutiques competed for seats at the largest tables.
JPMorgan wins the broader fee race
While Goldman Sachs topped pure M&A, JPMorgan led total investment-banking fees across advisory, equity capital markets and debt underwriting, bringing in $10.1 billion versus Goldman’s $8.9 billion, according to LSEG. JPMorgan executive Anu Aiyengar said the “strategic desire to grow and find scale is high,” a sentiment that helped keep deal pipelines active even as valuations climbed.
What Goldman Sachs’ 2025 lead says about the cycle
The 2025 surge follows a choppy backdrop. Global dealmaking first vaulted past $5 trillion in 2021, reaching $5.8 trillion as cheap financing and soaring equities helped buyers pay up, according to a Reuters recap of the 2021 record year.
As rate hikes hit in 2022, deal activity cooled and investment-banking revenue slid at major banks, including Goldman, as covered in a Reuters report on the 2022 slowdown.
Signs of recovery emerged in 2024 as mega-deals returned, lifting first-quarter global M&A volumes about 30% year over year, Reuters reported in its Q1 2024 dealmaking update.
In 2025, the rebound became harder to miss. Dealogic estimated global M&A jumped 41% year over year to $4.81 trillion, its second-highest total on record, in its M&A Highlights FY25 summary. Bain & Co., in a separate estimate, projected roughly $4.8 trillion of deal value for the year and pointed to megadeals and technology-driven transactions as key drivers, according to a Bain year-end release.
Bankers and lawyers say the question for 2026 is whether the mega-deal pace broadens into the midmarket. Late-2025 commentary pointed to a “chase for scale” that could keep the largest boards active, even as smaller deals wait for financing conditions to ease further, according to a Reuters analysis of the late-year rally.
