Wall Street’s M&A rebound got a boost on Monday with the biggest take-private buyout in years, but experts are warning that the hiring landscape isn’t showing the same signs of revival.
Video game producer Electronic Arts on Monday said it would be sold for $55 billion in a transaction hammered out by bankers at Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan. The price tag marks it the biggest take-private deal since the M&A boom in 2007 that preceded the global financial crisis. Though that’s welcome news for everyone’s league tables, it doesn’t stand to do much for their job boards, insiders said.
“Even a deal of that size is not going to move the needle that much” on year-end bonuses and job opportunities at Wall Street banks, said Alan Johnson, a compensation expert and founder of the consultancy Johnson Associates.
Dealmakers kicked off 2025 anticipating a cascade of M&A opportunities, but tariff concerns in the first half of the year temporarily halted growth. Though M&A is ticking up and big deals like the EA transaction certainly help, experts who spoke to Business Insider said the market for jobs has yet to return to the frothy levels reached during the pandemic, when global dealmaking broke new records.
“I would not be effusive that hiring is back. I think firms are still cautious,” Johnson said. “It’s probably gone from negative to flat,” he said of bank hiring levels, adding that AI will shrink analyst and associate classes, leading to fewer open roles over the long term.
M&A: activity is returning, but slowly
So far this year, global dealmaking has produced standout transactions like Google’s planned $32 billion acquisition of Wiz and Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s $13.4 billion purchase of Juniper Networks.
Large blockbuster transactions, however, don’t necessarily translate into an M&A market that lifts all boats. Indeed, data from deals tracker LSEG shows that while worldwide deals by volume were up 32% year-to-date as of late September, at $2.95 trillion, the total number of deals was down nearly 9%.
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Sophia Samadian, an investment banking recruiter at the firm Selby Jennings, said the focus has been on senior origination hires who can drive dealmaking, versus legions of support staff. “I think you’re going to see more origination talent being needed, especially at the director, managing director level,” she said.
Hiring has also been largely sector-specific, she said. “While the overall job growth is modest, I think there’s definitely sectors that are picking up, she said, adding that healthcare, energy, and ESG finance are “hiring aggressively.”
AI and fintech
Artificial intelligence is helping boost financial technology dealmaking and hiring, experts said.
Samadian said clients are creating dedicated teams for AI, crypto, and digital infrastructure. “We’re seeing just more investment firms in general try to focus and tailor into being crypto-focused or AI-focused or digital infrastructure or data analytics,” she said. Some dealmakers, she added, are spinning out of bigger banks, launching their own shops to get in on the action.
KPMG estimated $44.7 billion of fintech investment in the first half of 2025 — which the firm acknowledged was a drop from the prior six-month period — including about $7 billion for AI-focused firms.
The rise of artificial intelligence will also lessen the need for some bankers by automating time-intensive tasks. “You don’t need three analysts” on a deal, Johnson said, referring to Wall Street’s youngest ranks. “You need one analyst.”
Healthcare and biotech deal flow has begun to return, driving hiring needs in the sectors. This month, Lazard hired biopharmaceuticals insider Geoffrey Porges to its healthcare advisory group, a sign that banks are selectively boosting life sciences coverage, for instance. Recruiters also said analysts and associates with deep modeling experience in biotech and healthcare services are still attractive.
Equity capital markets: still waiting for momentum
Equity capital markets hiring has been slower than M&A, despite the recent surge in high-profile IPOs. Johnson said equity underwriting incentives are flat to down. Samadian said her team has seen only scattered hiring in ECM.
“From the capital markets perspective, right now it’s been a slower market for the equity side versus M&A, which is very much ebb and flow,” she said.
Johnson expects most bankers will be paid more this year, but increases will be modest. “Most people are going to get paid more this year. I think if you’re really good,” the year could hold promise, he said. “If you’re average, not so much.”
According to summer projections from his firm, equity sales and trading bonuses were expected to rise by as much as 30% on the backs of strong volumes, fixed income sales and trading by as much as 20%, and debt underwriting by up to 15%. Advisory and equity underwriting were projected to be flat to down.
One recruiter pointed to optimism coming from the buyside — private equity firms hungry to do a deal — that next year could be more robust: “There’s a lot of positive momentum in buyside hiring” going into the fourth quarter, said buyside recruiter Anthony Keizner of Odyssey Search Partners. And that could benefit everyone.
“Alternative investment firms have been buoyed by rate cuts, decent investment returns, and asset inflows,” he said, adding that this is translating into robust 2026 hiring plans.
