GlobalData stated Houlihan Lokey is the highest M&A advisor by quantity thus far this 12 months.
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 turn into one in every of Wall Avenue’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 firms, 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 transient cease on the planet of excessive finance.
4 many years later, and he is nonetheless there — and now sits on the helm of the financial institution, having been named to the chief government function final 12 months, 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 12 months, Houlihan labored with monetary sponsor shoppers like Carlyle and suggested the hair care model Coloration Wow on its sale to L’Oréal — a part of the 240 transactions it dealt with via the third quarter, based on 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; nonetheless, within the middle-market enviornment — offers usually valued at round $1 billion and underneath — the agency has drawn important deal movement.
Throughout its most up-to-date earnings disclosure this week — the financial institution’s second quarter of the 2026 fiscal 12 months — Houlihan introduced that it generated revenues of $659 million, 15% increased than the identical quarter final 12 months. Company finance revenues of practically $439 million have been about 17% increased than the identical interval final 12 months; whereas monetary and valuation advisory introduced in $87 million, up nearly 10%.
“Capital markets are broad open and capital is plentiful,” Adelson stated, based on 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 fee 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 informed 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 influence their compensation budgets, Houlihan has taken the alternative strategy.
Since early September, it is added six managing administrators from firms 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 providers, personal fairness protection, and capital options.
Scott Adelson, CEO of Houlihan Lokey, informed Enterprise Insider that his agency is increasing its capital options staff and hiring in area of interest subsectors of dealmaking.Courtesy of Houlihan Lokey
Adelson stated one progress 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 practically 2,700 folks, of which practically 350 have been managing administrators.
The hiring spree helps a broader effort to deepen Houlihan’s trade protection. “To have the ability to rent via the cycles, to by no means actually have any layoffs in an trade that has traditionally been recognized for increasing and contracting like an accordion,” Adelson stated, has introduced “great” stability to the staff.
Now, the agency has about 200 devoted trade sectors, he stated; every is led by senior bankers who’re specialists in several 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 firms and traders elevate personal capital, refinance debt, or handle their steadiness sheets and has dealt with greater than 100 transactions this 12 months, based on the corporate.
One other a part of Houlihan’s growth technique has come via 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 centered on insurance coverage and wealth administration. The deal added 50 folks to the monetary providers group, together with 13 managing administrators, based on the corporate’s announcement. Later that 12 months, 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 great 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 extremely small agency and realized that I favored being the dumbest particular person within the room somewhat 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’ particular person — what’s subsequent, what is the plan?” he stated. “We’re nowhere close to what we’re able to attaining.”
