GlobalData stated Houlihan Lokey is the highest M&A advisor by quantity thus far this yr.
The LA-based funding financial institution employed senior dealmakers and expanded its ranks as rivals held again.
CEO Scott Adelson says “the flywheel is catching,” explaining how the financial institution is positioning itself.
Scott Adelson did not anticipate to be sitting on this seat proper now.
“I am most likely an unintentional funding banker,” the CEO of Houlihan Lokey — which has develop into one in every of Wall Road’s busiest funding banks by deal quantity — stated in an interview with Enterprise Insider in September.
After incomes an MBA from the College of Chicago Sales space College of Enterprise, Adelson began a small enterprise and anticipated to spend his profession constructing corporations, not advising them. However when he joined a roughly 30-person valuation store in Los Angeles in 1987, he thought he was making only a temporary cease on this planet of excessive finance.
4 a long time later, and he is nonetheless there — and now sits on the helm of the financial institution, having been named to the chief govt position final yr, and beforehand serving as copresident and world cohead of company finance.
Houlihan has come a good distance from its roots because the restructuring and chapter knowledgeable shoppers considered when a liquidity panic was afoot. This yr, Houlihan labored with monetary sponsor shoppers like Carlyle and suggested the hair care model Shade Wow on its sale to L’Oréal — a part of the 240 transactions it dealt with by means of the third quarter, in response to GlobalData league tables reviewed by Enterprise Insider.
To make sure, different bulge-bracket banks deal with bigger company mergers or take-privates and have surpassed Houlihan within the transaction worth they work on; nevertheless, within the middle-market area — offers typically valued at round $1 billion and underneath — the agency has drawn vital deal stream.
Throughout its most up-to-date earnings disclosure this week — the financial institution’s second quarter of the 2026 fiscal yr — Houlihan introduced that it generated revenues of $659 million, 15% increased than the identical quarter final yr. Company finance revenues of almost $439 million have been about 17% increased than the identical interval final yr; whereas monetary and valuation advisory introduced in $87 million, up nearly 10%.
“Capital markets are vast open and capital is plentiful,” Adelson stated, in response to an earnings name transcript. “All this has elevated total confidence within the dealmaking urge for food.”
Adelson has been predicting the rebound for months. After a sluggish few years, dealmaking lastly seems to have returned in 2025 because of a steadier charge surroundings, lighter regulation, and a wave of optimism about AI and expertise. Adelson says the agency’s prepared, pointing to a method that is expanded its ranks whereas others have retreated from hiring and deepened its sector-specific protection.
“The flywheel is catching,” he advised Enterprise Insider, “and we’re prepared for it.”
Whereas many giant banks have remained cautious about rising staffing ranges in latest months, not sure how expertise or different effectivity pushes will affect their compensation budgets, Houlihan has taken the alternative strategy.
Since early September, it is added six managing administrators from corporations like UBS and Capital One. They’ve joined Houlihan groups within the US and Europe, broadening the financial institution’s attain in healthcare finance, mortgage expertise, IT companies, non-public fairness protection, and capital options.
Scott Adelson, CEO of Houlihan Lokey, advised Enterprise Insider that his agency is increasing its capital options workforce and hiring in area of interest subsectors of dealmaking.Courtesy of Houlihan Lokey
Adelson stated one development space of continued funding is the agency’s capital options group, which advises shoppers on financings and balance-sheet methods. As of mid-2025, the agency’s total head depend was almost 2,700 individuals, of which almost 350 have been managing administrators.
The hiring spree helps a broader effort to deepen Houlihan’s business protection. “To have the ability to rent by means of the cycles, to by no means actually have any layoffs in an business that has traditionally been recognized for increasing and contracting like an accordion,” Adelson stated, has introduced “super” stability to the workforce.
Now, the agency has about 200 devoted business sectors, he stated; every is led by senior bankers who’re specialists in numerous fields. That is greater than double its protection from a decade in the past.
Inside company finance, the capital options group operates as one in every of two engines alongside M&A. It helps corporations and traders elevate non-public capital, refinance debt, or handle their steadiness sheets and has dealt with greater than 100 transactions this yr, in response to the corporate.
One other a part of Houlihan’s growth technique has come by means of small, focused acquisitions of boutique funding banks. Since 2020, it has acquired eight particular person corporations.
In 2024, the agency purchased Waller Helms Advisors, a Chicago-based boutique targeted on insurance coverage and wealth administration. The deal added 50 individuals to the monetary companies group, together with 13 managing administrators, in response to the corporate’s announcement. Later that yr, it acquired Prytania Options, a London agency that builds analytics software program utilized in portfolio valuation and fund-advisory work — an instance of how Houlihan is making an attempt to combine expertise inside its core enterprise.
Adelson stated the agency’s strategy to M&A prioritizes cultural synergy. “We have walked away from offers that made super financial sense,” he stated, as a result of they weren’t a match culturally. And he nonetheless considers his entrée into banking an accident.
“I joined a very small agency and realized that I preferred being the dumbest individual within the room relatively than the neatest,” he stated, recalling Houlihan’s early days. Now, he tends to see himself as extra of a builder than a banker — a mindset which he is bringing to the agency’s subsequent chapter.
“I’m very a lot a ‘looking-forward’ individual — what’s subsequent, what is the plan?” he stated. “We’re nowhere close to what we’re able to attaining.”
