Wall Street Boutiques See Record Backlog as M&A Pipeline Poised for Continued Rebound Into Year-End
Alina Collins
Lazard, Evercore and PJT Partners all report deal backlogs at or near record highs, with large strategic transactions filling the gap left by sluggish private-equity dealmaking — management teams expect activity to climb steadily through year-end.
How full are the boutiques' order books right now?
All three firms described Q2 M&A activity as "robust," with backlogs at or near all-time highs.
This means → the pipeline of mandated-but-not-yet-closed deals is thicker than ever, giving revenue visibility for the next several quarters.
The driver, though, is large strategic transactions — company-to-company mergers driven by business logic. Private-equity dealmaking — buyouts funded with leverage — remains subdued.
Why do Lazard's early-stage signals deserve a closer look?
Conflict checks — the compliance step an investment bank runs before taking on a new mandate — rose nearly 40% year-over-year at Lazard.
For deals above $5 billion, conflict checks more than doubled. In plain terms = the "waiting room" for mega-mergers has twice as many names in it, signaling a sharp rise in consolidation intent among large corporates.
Lazard's weighted pipeline for 2027 already exceeds twice the size of last year's 2026 pipeline at the same point. This reflects an acceleration, not a gradual build, in large-deal reserves.
Why can't private-equity M&A get off the ground?
Lazard CEO Peter Orszag pinpointed the bottleneck: a persistent valuation gap between buyers and sellers. Sellers want more; buyers won't pay up.
This means → PE funds are sitting on vast pools of undeployed capital ("dry powder"), but until the bid-ask spread narrows, that capital stays parked — and deal volumes stay capped.
Meanwhile, secondary-market transactions — where PE funds trade existing portfolio stakes among themselves rather than doing new buyouts — are seeing "quite robust" demand. Lazard acquired Campbell Lutyens earlier this year to expand its advisory footprint in this space.
What new deal flow are software and AI generating?
Evercore CEO John Weinberg said conversations around software deals have begun to pick up, with AI's disruption of software businesses set to drive sustained M&A activity.
Some software companies have already approached Evercore's restructuring team over liability management concerns. In plain terms = AI is reshaping earnings outlooks for parts of the software sector, forcing companies to renegotiate their debt — which itself creates investment-banking work.
PJT Partners added that the center of gravity in capital deployment is shifting from take-private transactions (PE buying a public company and delisting it) to structured investments (flexible equity-debt hybrid injections).
What is the key variable for the second half?
PJT Partners CEO Paul Taubman expects activity to "continue to steadily move higher" and framed a potential rebound from further macro deterioration as a "call option" — meaning: if conditions worsen, pent-up pressure could actually force more deals.
His words: "I think we're recovering from a trough, but it won't be a sharp snap-back — it will be steady improvement."
This means → the single validation point for H2 is whether PE's valuation gap narrows. If it does, total M&A volume shifts from "large strategic deals carrying the load alone" to "strategic + PE firing on both cylinders" — and only then do record backlogs translate into a true revenue surge for the boutiques.
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