Morgan Stanley and Rothschild & Co have led the mergers and acquisitions (M&A) rankings for financial advisers in Europe during 2025, based on data from GlobalData’s latest league table.

According to GlobalData’s Financial Deals Database, Morgan Stanley advised on transactions with a combined value of $109.5bn during the year, topping the value chart.

Rothschild & Co led by volume, with advisory on 119 transactions.

Goldman Sachs ranked second in terms of total deal value, advising on $100.3bn worth of deals.

The next three positions were held by Barclays with $53.5bn in advised deals, JPMorgan with $53.3bn, and Bank of America with $49.4bn.

In terms of volume, Ernst & Young followed Rothschild & Co with 103 transactions advised.

PwC, Houlihan Lokey, and Deloitte rounded out the top five with 100, 95 and 89 transactions, respectively.

GlobalData lead analyst Aurojyoti Bose said: “Morgan Stanley was one of the only two advisers to surpass $100 billion mark in total deal value during 2025. It advised on 24 billion-dollar deals* and its involvement in these big-ticket deals helped it top the chart by value. Morgan Stanley also held the ninth position by volume in 2025.

“Meanwhile, Rothschild & Co was the top adviser by volume in 2024 and managed to retain its leadership position by this metric in 2025 as well, despite a drop in the total number of deals advised by it. In fact, majority of the top 10 advisers by volume experienced a drop in the number of deals. Rothschild & Co also occupied the eighth position by value in 2025.”

GlobalData’s league tables are based on the real-time tracking of thousands of company websites, advisory firm websites and other reliable sources available on the secondary domain. A dedicated team of analysts monitors all these sources to gather in-depth details for each deal, including adviser names. 

To ensure further robustness to the data, the company also seeks submissions of deals from leading advisers.