The great M&A slump is shaking up giants of investment banking

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. wouldn’t even bother picking up phone calls from recruiters at smaller rivals. This year, managers at Jefferies Financial Group Inc., Evercore Inc.

and PJT Partners Inc. say they’ve been inundated with CVs from the likes of Goldman, Barclays Plc and Credit Suisse. Never in their careers have they seen so much interest from senior Goldman staffers, the bankers said, asking not to be identified discussing competitors.

Those smaller firms are talking to dozens of partners and managing directors across the industry at any given time and selecting the best from that crop, they said. Welcome to the new normal in the world of investment banking. A slump in mergers and acquisitions and the collapse of Credit Suisse have sparked an epic turnover of senior managers across the industry spanning trading and advisory services.

It goes all the way to the top: of last year’s eight top merger advisory firms, seven have changed their investment bank chiefs or shuffled their M&A leadership in 2023. Having expanded aggressively during the boom years, Goldman, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup Inc. are among those cutting jobs in some of the biggest downsizing rounds the industry has seen in the past decade.

At the same time, lower-ranked rivals such as Deutsche Bank AG and Banco Santander SA are on a hiring spree, while boutiques are poaching top talent they’ve eyed for years, betting the next M&A boom cycle is just around the corner. But the current downturn remains the elephant in the room and prospects for a revival still seem hazy. Higher finance costs, volatility spurred by geopolitical tensions and threats of a global recession have sent deal volumes down about 40% to roughly $1 trillion this year through July 20