Evercore’s Purchase of Robey Warshaw May Birth Trans-Atlantic M&A Titan

It’s a deal designed to launch a thousand others. 

On Wednesday, Evercore announced that it’s acquiring London-based investment bank Robey Warshaw, a similarly modest boutique firm with an outsized presence in the M&A space, for nearly $200 million. The only question: Who’s soaking up the advisory fees?

International Man of M&A History

Founded by former US Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman in 1995, Evercore has grown into something of a full-fledged rival of major Wall Street banks in the M&A space. Last year, the firm finished sixth in PriceWaterhouseCoopers’ US advisory fee-ranking report after advising on 151 deals worth a total of $291 billion. In its second-quarter earnings report this year, Evercore touted its advisory business scoring record first-half revenues after handling four of the 10 largest transactions so far in 2025, including Dick’s Sporting Goods’ $2.5 billion acquisition of Foot Locker and Cox Communications’ merger with Charter Communications.

Now, Evercore is applying its M&A expertise to its own business, with the Robey Warshaw acquisition marking its largest deal since buying research and brokerage firm ISI Group over a decade ago. Why? Strategic expansion, of course, and perhaps because Evercore sees something of itself in Robey Warshaw:

• Despite employing just 18 people in total, Robey Warshaw has made itself a mainstay in the UK (which remains the second-largest market for investment banking fees behind the US), advising on some of the biggest UK deals in recent memory, including SoftBank’s £24 billion acquisition of chipmaker Arm and AB InBev’s $79 billion purchase of SABMiller.
• Much of the firm’s success has been credited to its leadership team, including co-founders Simon Warshaw and Simon Robey, with the latter receiving nearly 50% of the firm’s profits each year, per the Financial Times. The deal locks in each of Robey Warshaw’s five partners, including the 65-year-old Robey, for at least six years.

European Vacation: The deal will help bolster Evercore’s presence in Europe, where it placed 13th by deal volume in PwC’s advisory rankings last year. It’s the bank’s first major acquisition on the continent since its roughly £86 million takeover of boutique investment firm Lexicon in 2011, though it has recently pulled off some high-profile talent poaching in France, including the hiring earlier this year of former top Citigroup dealmaker Luigi de Vecchi to serve as Evercore’s European chair.