Dealmaking Surge Delivers Wall Street’s Strongest Years Since the Pandemic Boom

Deal or no deal is no longer the question — now it’s how big and how fast. The banking industry is facing one of the most regulatory-friendly environments in years, with global M&A activity surging past $1T in the third quarter. This tailwind could mark the most lucrative period for bankers since the pandemic-era boom.

Deal fever: With the Trump administration’s business-friendly stance emboldening CEOs to pursue deals once considered impossible, global investment banking fees hit $95.4B through September, marking the second-highest year-to-date total. Q3 alone saw 14 mega-deals worth over $10B, including Union Pacific’sUNP

$85B bid for Norfolk SouthernNSC

and the $55B leveraged buyout of Electronic Arts.

• The dealmaking spree has reached smaller markets too, with JPMorgan’s mid-cap investment banking unit completing 175+ deals this year and projecting a 15-20% revenue increase from 2024.
• Jefferies Financial GroupJEF
  reported its best-ever quarter for investment banking advisory with $656M in revenue, helping drive profits up 34% — though its stock is down nearly 18% this year.

Citi’s Comeback Year

If there’s someone capitalizing on this boom better than others, it’s CitigroupC

. The bank is more than halfway through its five-year turnaround plan that involves reducing headcount, simplifying operations, improving efficiency, and supercharging its investment banking division. The US bank has emerged as one of the biggest winners, with its stock surging 45.1% this year — outpacing JPMorgan’sJPM

31.4% gain and Goldman’sGS

38.5% rise.

• Driven by Vis Raghavan — Citi’s banking head, who joined from JPMorgan last year — the firm has climbed back to fourth place in Bloomberg‘s M&A advisory rankings, a position it last held in 2019.
• Citi beat out JPMorgan to advise Johnson & JohnsonJNJ
  on its $14.6B acquisition of Intra-Cellular Therapies — the biggest biopharma deal in over two years.

Dealmakers’ dream run: Another catalyst could drive shares higher in the coming years. JPMorgan’s betting $18B annually on tech to become what executives call “a fully AI-connected enterprise” — and they’re already seeing results. Its LLM Suite platform, which gives 250K employees access to OpenAI and Anthropic models, can generate investment banking pitch decks in 30 seconds — a task that previously took teams of junior bankers hours to complete. With labor costs making up more than half of expenses, these tools could supercharge margins and let banks push through more deals, faster.