Who we are
Forty-six offices, one standard: the owner of the firm sits at your table.
M&A Worldwide is an organisation of independent M&A advisory firms, present in 46 offices across 38 countries. Since 2004 we have advised owners, management teams, corporates and investors on the transactions that define a company's future: selling it, acquiring the right target, raising capital, taking it private or steering it through a difficult moment.
We work in the mid-market, on transactions typically between €10 million and €300 million, where the difference between a fair outcome and the best one is made by judgement, access and preparation rather than by balance-sheet size. In 2025 our members closed 598 transactions, which placed M&A Worldwide second in the world by number of mid-market deals for the third consecutive year, in the independent rankings compiled by LSEG.
What makes us different is the model. Each member firm is owned by the partners who run it. There is no institutional shareholder, no product to place and no head office taking a share of the fee. The partner you meet on day one is the partner who negotiates for you on the last day, and behind that partner stand more than 500 professionals in every major market who open doors a single firm cannot.
Our ambition has never been to be the largest. It is to be the only organisation of its kind: independent in every office, united across borders, and judged by the outcomes our clients achieve.
39
Partners
38
Countries
500+
Professionals
45+
€ Bn Transaction value over the last 5 years
Global reach
Every M&A Worldwide office is a leading independent adviser in its own market, run by partners who have spent their careers there. They know the owners, the acquirers, the investors and the regulators by name, and they bring that knowledge to every cross-border mandate the organisation takes on.
When a client in Lisbon needs a buyer in Munich, or a fund in São Paulo needs a target in Warsaw, the conversation starts with a partner who already has the relationship. Thirteen industry groups connect our sector specialists across continents, so the buyer list is built by people who know the sector, not pulled from a database. The result is a process that moves faster, reaches further and closes more often.
“For a board, the test of any transaction is whether it strengthens the business under several plausible scenarios, not just the one in the pitch. That assessment has to happen before the deal gains momentum, and it has to be made by people who know the market the target operates in. That is what M&A Worldwide is built to provide.”
Jens Møller
Chairman of the Board, M&A Worldwide
Our history
From seven founders to the second-busiest mid-market advisor in the world, in twenty-two years.
M&A Worldwide was founded in 2004 by independent advisers from Germany, the Netherlands, France, Spain, the United Kingdom, Belgium and Norway. Their clients were going abroad to buy, sell and raise capital, and the founders wanted to follow them without giving up the independence that made their firms worth hiring. The answer was an association, not a merger: each firm would keep its name, its ownership and its market, and share its relationships with the others.
For its first decade the organisation grew the way such associations do, one trusted introduction at a time, across Europe and then into the Americas and Asia-Pacific.
The second decade was different. From 2016 we invested in what a network usually lacks: a permanent executive team, shared technology for deal origination and execution, industry groups that work across borders, and a convention every six months where partners meet clients and each other. In the ten years to 2025 the number of transactions closed by our members rose more than fivefold and their combined value twenty-sevenfold.
M&A Worldwide moved from 25th in the world by number of mid-market deals in 2016 to second in 2023, and has held that position since. Today most of our member firms rank among the top three M&A advisers in their own markets, so a client who engages one of them engages, in effect, a market leader in every country the transaction may reach. Together they have built an organisation that now outranks every independent network and all but one of the Big Four. We did not set out to be the largest. We set out to be the only one of our kind, and we are still at it.
Ownership and governance
M&A Worldwide is the collective name of independent member firms affiliated to the M&A Worldwide association, constituted under French law and headquartered in Paris. Each member firm is a separately owned and regulated investment banking or financial advisory business, providing M&A, corporate finance, debt advisory, capital raising and valuation services under the laws of its own jurisdiction. The association itself does not provide advisory services to clients.
The association is governed by a Board elected by the members from among their own partners, and run day to day by a professional executive team. No bank, fund or institutional investor can own a stake in the association or in its members' seats, which is what guarantees that every piece of advice given under the M&A Worldwide name serves one interest only: the client's.
New members are admitted by the Board after a review of their track record, their team and their standing in their market, and serve a six-month trial period with full participation before confirmation.