The happiest bankers this year are in TMT M&A. The saddest are in healthcare
2025 has been a weird year for banking so far. Wild industry optimism about a second Trumpian term turned to market shock on what Trump called “Liberation Day”. But not everyone has had the same ups or downs since then.
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Intelligence firm BCG Expand says that although the overall banking fee pool declined 4% in Q1, the decline wasn't distributed evenly.
Source: BCG Expand
The best banking team to be in early in 2024 was the technology, media, and telecoms (TMT) M&A team. TMT has had a remarkable first quarter, with the fee pool increasing by 74%, according to BCG Expand. BCG credited the growth to “continued consolidation” among the industry’s biggest firms, with AI and digital infrastructure fueling expansion. It’s no surprise: the biggest deal of Q1 was Google’s acquisition of cloud security company Wiz for $32bn.
Aside from TMT, industrials & materials banking has been quietly strong. Debt capital markets revenue was flat, M&A revenue was up just 13%, equity capital markets was up by 7%, and Leveraged finance revenues were down 7%. None of the numbers are remarkable – neither the biggest nor smallest in their categories – but it was enough for the sector’s fee pool to see the second highest rate of growth, on average, across the industry.
However, without a doubt, the worst place to be in banking right now is in a healthcare team. The healthcare investment banking wallet declined by 44% in Q1 of 2025 compared to Q1 of 2024; it was, by a significant margin, the most depressed product group surveyed by BCG. The decline also came despite some pretty chunky deals in Q1, such as Johnson & Johnson’s $14bn acquisition of Intra-Cellular Therapies.
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