M&A & Deals - Partner & Team Search

M&A lead advisory is the most visible and most fiercely contested talent market in corporate finance, and in our two lead hubs it re-accelerated hard in 2025. Hong Kong was the standout: HKEX topped the global IPO league with roughly HK$280 billion raised across over 110 listings, up around 218% year-on-year, and that equity-market revival pulled a stalled M&A and strategic-advisory pipeline back to life - firms that had frozen partner headcount through 2023 reopened it ^[2]. Singapore, the gateway for cross-border Southeast Asia deal flow, recorded roughly US$70.4 billion of M&A involving Singapore on LSEG data, anchoring the region's busiest middle-market origination desks ^[3].

Those hubs sit inside a regional surge: APAC M&A value rose 39.3% to nearly US$1.2 trillion in 2025 on flat volume, so the uplift came from larger, more complex transactions - exactly the work that commands senior partner attention and the richest fees - with 35 megadeals worth a combined US$416 billion restoring confidence to a market that had been mid-market-starved ^[1]. The worldwide total of roughly US$4.8 trillion is context, not the headline ^[4].

The Big Four and the larger independents now compete directly with bulge-bracket and boutique investment banks for the same Singapore and Hong Kong advisory talent. By APAC deal volume in 2025, PwC led all financial advisers with about 230 deals, ahead of its Big Four peers, while the global investment banks led on value ^[5]. That bifurcation - accounting firms winning the mid-market on volume, banks winning the headline value - defines who each firm needs to hire: accounting-firm advisory leaders in the SG and HK hubs prize origination density and sector relationships over single jumbo mandates.

Hiring in this sub-discipline is overwhelmingly relationship-led and team-shaped. A partner's value is the pipeline they originate and the directors and managers who can execute it, so lift-outs of a partner-plus-team are the norm at the senior end. The most contested point in any negotiation is deal-credit portability: which named transactions a candidate can legitimately claim a lead role on, and whether the relationships behind them travel. Restrictive covenants, garden leave and client-non-solicit terms make timing as important as price.

Sub-sector specialisation increasingly determines who gets hired. Across APAC, financial-services M&A value nearly doubled in 2025 to US$196.9 billion, and industrials and chemicals delivered the largest absolute increase at US$263.5 billion (up 69.9%) - so partners with credible FIG, industrials or TMT origination are in acutely short supply, while generalist coverage commands a discount ^[1]. Above all, Singapore-Malaysia-Hong Kong middle-market corridor expertise - alongside China-outbound, India-inbound and Middle East capital into Asia - is the axis of scarcity we are searched on most.