NEW YORK, Jan. 20, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Axial, the online M&A platform for buyers and sellers of American small and medium-sized businesses, today released its Q4 2021 Lower Middle Market Investment Banking League Tables. Assembled quarterly, the League Tables aggregate and rank the top 20 Axial sell-side M&A advisors based on their quarterly platform deal activity, incorporating three core M&A advisory attributes: deal attractiveness quality, buyer selectivity, and process efficiency. For business owners and dealmakers transacting in the lower middle market, these league tables are a useful data source that aims to measure how investment banks rank against their peers and how effective they are in executing lower middle market M&A transactions.
Download the Q4 2021 Lower Middle Market Investment Banking League Tables
"2021 has been the most active year on record for lower middle market M&A on Axial, and the broader domestic and global M&A market reflect the same," says Peter Lehrman, founder and CEO of Axial. "Recovered markets, a Covid-driven backlog of sellers, cheap financing, and heavily incentivized buyers combined to create extremely active small business M&A conditions. We offer our sincere congratulations to Q4's Top 20 lower middle market investment banks for their results in the final quarter of a record year."
Dealmakers marketed more than 7,000 deals via Axial in 2021, a 31% year-on-year increase in platform deal volume. Average revenue of deals marketed by investment banks on Axial was $21.9M; average EBITDA was $4.2M. From an industry standpoint, Industrials M&A led the way (32%), followed by Software & Technology (14%) Consumer Goods (14%), and Food & Hospitality (11%). Transportation, Healthcare and Business Services each accounted for 8% of yearly dealflow.
"What's just as interesting as the record M&A volumes is the increasing diversity of players in the market. Independent sponsors, SMB owner-operators and single-family offices each represent credible alternatives to the incumbent strategic buyers and committed capital funds that have dominated the market for so long," says Dani Forman, Director of Research at Axial. "You can see the best M&A advisors in the lower middle market capitalizing on this trend and creating a larger set of exit alternatives for their clients."
Unlike traditional league tables, which assess firms against deal volume and dollar volume, Axial's league tables incorporate data on investment banks that reveal their selectivity in engaging various buyers, the relative attractiveness of their client's businesses, and their overall sell-side process efficacy. Together, the top 20 investment banks are those who work with the most in-demand clients; balance breadth, selectivity, and accuracy in the buyers they engage; and generate the largest number of positive outcomes for their clients.
Dani Forman, Director of Research
Axial | dani.forman@axial.net
Axial is the online M&A platform for buyers and sellers of American small and medium-sized businesses. The company's pioneering deal sourcing and deal marketing platform is trusted by professional buyers, M&A advisors, and business owners to source opportunities, assess the quality and reputation of buyers, and exchange critical deal information. A select list of publicly announced transactions executed by members of the Axial platform can be found here. www.axial.com.
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