Mergers and acquisitions offer tremendous opportunities, as well as the potential for risk. To avoid making costly mistakes, you’ll want to work with a reputable and highly experienced M&A firm that can guide you through the process and ensure a successful transaction.
This article will list the 10 best M&A advisory firms to work with in 2024, offering options for businesses of all sizes seeking M&A services, whether you are a small or medium-sized business or a large corporation.
What is an M&A advisory firm?
M&A advisory firms act as intermediaries, helping companies buy, sell, or merge with other businesses. They offer their expertise to ensure a smooth transaction, assisting with negotiations, valuation, financing, market research, and more. They also provide a pool of pre-qualified buyers and sellers to ensure you get maximum value during a sale or find the right acquisition for your portfolio.
Why work with an M&A advisory firm?
While there are fees associated with working with an M&A advisory firm, these are often offset by the value you get from their services. For instance, if you’re looking to exit your business, an M&A advisory firm can likely match you with higher quality and a larger quantity of potential buyers and investors, leading to higher valuations than an independent sale would.
Best M&A advisory firms
1. Empire Flippers
If you’re looking to buy or sell an online business, Empire Flippers is the firm you’ll want to work with. It offers the largest curated marketplace of profitable online businesses for sale and boasts a global network of thousands of pre-qualified investors looking to acquire the right business for their portfolio.
Empire Flippers has facilitated the sale of over $450 million worth of online businesses, with this fast-growing, Inc. 5000 company becoming the M&A brokerage of choice for investors, business owners, and entrepreneurs in the online space.
This full-service M&A firm will walk you through every step of the process, offering assistance with negotiations, due diligence, and the transfer of digital assets from the seller to the new buyer. Simply put, you benefit way more from using Empire Flippers than you would selling or buying on your own.
By working with Empire Flippers, you’re able to immediately weed out any non-serious buyers and access a list of carefully vetted, high-quality online businesses for sale.
2. FE International
FE International has facilitated over 1,500 M&A deals since 2010, and we’re not talking about piddly little companies either, we’re talking over $50 billion worth of high-revenue technology businesses.
Named multiple times as one of ‘The Americas’ Fastest Growing Companies’ by the Financial Times, this award-winning M&A advisor has the expertise to help you buy or sell any tech or digital business, with its network of over 80,000 pre-qualified investors and sellers.
With offices in New York, Miami, London, Mumbai, and San Fransisco, this international M&A advisor will work with you to maximize your sale price or help you find the right business to add to your portfolio, no matter where you are.
3. Morgan Stanley
Corporations, governments, and other large organizations worldwide trust Morgan Stanley’s advisory and capital-raising services. This global leader in investment banking’s M&A team can facilitate the very biggest transactions, be it mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, joint ventures, and more.
Morgan Stanley understands that M&As can be high risk; however, they have proven that they have a winning repeatable process that they’ve used to help countless companies successfully make high-quality acquisitions that meaningfully add to shareholder returns.
However, it must be said, that unless you’re a massive corporation, high-growth startup, or some other large organization, Morgan Stanley likely isn’t the best-suited M&A advisor for you.
4. Raincatcher
Raincatcher is a mergers and acquisition firm specializing in small to mid-size businesses that generate $500k to $10M in annual revenue, often family-owned businesses. The typical sale or purchase price on deals facilitated by Raincatcher is between $5M and $75M, but they can also work with projects with a smaller or higher valuation.
Raincatcher appreciates that buying or selling a business is a huge decision, with profound implications. That’s why their professional team, made up of former business owners, accountants, and investment bankers, has created a specialized process that delivers maximum value for all parties involved.
This winning approach has enabled them to grow to become an Inc 5000 company and one of America’s leading M&A advisors.
5. Sica Fletcher
Sica Fletcher has closed over $11 billion in M&A deals in the last decade, proudly boasting that it has closed more deals than any other M&A firm of its size during this period.
They state that their unique selling point is that they do not suffer from “paralysis by analysis” unlike some other M&A firms. Thanks to the vast amount of real-world experience they’ve gained from closing so many deals, they can work at a pace and level of confidence that others can’t.
There isn’t an industry that Sica Fletcher doesn’t have connections in, be it financial services, manufacturing, healthcare, or tech, meaning they can provide sell-side advisory to all types of business owners, netting them on average 30% higher valuations than independently negotiated deals.
6. Intrepid
Intrepid is a Los Angeles-based global M&A firm that offers sell-side and buy-side advisory to middle-market companies. For sellers, Intrepid facilitates a range of transactions, including minority sales, majority recapitalizations with financial sponsors, full sales, and more.
For buyers, Intrepid can assist you during the search process, helping you develop the right acquisition plan and identify the best opportunities. Then, they can help you with negotiations and financing to ensure you have a smooth acquisition.
Intrepid knows that acquisitions can create tremendous value when done right, but equally, can be devastating when mistakes are made. They use their expertise to ensure you have a successful acquisition plan that maximizes value and minimizes risk.
7. J.P. Morgan
J.P. Morgan is known worldwide; it’s the largest bank in the USA and the most valuable one with assets of $2.6 trillion. J.P. Morgan advises institutions and corporations on mergers and acquisitions, leveraging its vast global network of M&A bankers located in all major markets around the world.
They offer advice on transaction structure, negotiations, valuation, strategy, and more while providing extensive financing options via debt and equity issuance platforms.
J.P. Morgan, due to its vast size and position as a leading financial services firm, tends to focus on larger corporations and institutions requiring M&A services, so if you’re a small to mid-size business, a more tailored M&A firm is likely a better option.
8. EY
Ernst & Young (EY) is one of the ‘Big Four’ accounting firms, offering M&A services worldwide with its team of 1900 dedicated M&A professionals based in over 65 countries.
EY has completed more than 1700 deals in the last 5 years, using its deep industry knowledge and proven strategies to help a range of clients achieve their strategic objectives.
Whether it’s sell-side advisory, buy-side advisory, joint ventures, or divestitures, EY can help you establish the right financial model, assist with negotiations, conduct due diligence, and determine the right valuation, for a smooth M&A process.
9. Goldman Sachs
Goldman Sachs is another household name and leading investment banking company. This leading M&A advisor offers tactical advice to its clients, helping them drive transformation by turning the challenges they face into opportunities that deliver long-term success.
Goldman Sachs’ global network enables them to assist corporations and institutions worldwide, helping them expand their global reach and making cross-border M&A transactions possible.
Goldman Sachs seeks not just to be an advisor, but an integrated partner that helps your organization execute and achieve its strategic vision, offering its unmatched experience to give you a competitive advantage.
10. BMI
BMI is a specialized M&A advisor for lower-middle market businesses with revenues ranging from $3 million to $100 million. With their large pool of regional, national, and international buyers, they’re able to attain maximum value for business owners looking to sell.
BMI has extensive industry knowledge across a range of sectors, including manufacturing, technology, healthcare, and construction, offering expert buy-side advisory, sell-side advisory, and valuation services that draw on its over 30 years of M&A experience.
If you’re a small to mid-size business looking to sell, why not reach out to BMI and take up its offer of a free, confidential assessment? They might be the ideal M&A advisor for your needs.
The bottom line
That’s our list of the ten best M&A advisory firms in 2024. We hope you found it helpful. You can’t go wrong with any of these; they all have the experience and proven track record of success you need to ensure your M&A process goes the way you want.
Of course, you’ll want to do a little further research to establish which of these is best suited for your specific needs before committing. Don’t hesitate to reach out to any of these firms for further assistance.
