World's best bank for advisory 2018: Goldman Sachs

Goldman Sachs may be going through a rather messy change of leadership as it strives to build new revenues in consumer lending and financing to compensate for declining and volatile markets revenues. Tellingly, however, even its fiercest rivals are not celebrating yet.

“They may have lost some franchise bankers, but I’ve heard Goldman Sachs written off several times over the decades,” says one. “And look where they are.”

As usual, the firm is right at the top of the M&A advisory league tables. For full-year 2017, Dealogic counts global M&A revenue at Goldman of $2.6 billion, ahead of second ranked JPMorgan with $2.1 billion, third-placed Morgan Stanley with $1.7 billion and Bank of America Merrill Lynch with $1.5 billion.

Presumably its clients know what they are doing and are paying it for something valuable. They are not giving it M&A league table credit in partial recompense for handling their cash management or providing revolving lines of credit.