The most desirable technology banking MDs are on $10m+

It's a good year to be an investment banker specialising in technology clients. It's also a good year to be an investment banker specialising in technology clients who's looking for a new job. 

We observed earlier this month that banks had been wildly hiring managing director (MD) level technology investment bankers, with three major hires (Ed Liu to Deutsche Bank, Rohan Sen to Citi, Ben Froehlich to Goldman Sachs) happening in the space of a few weeks. 

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Since then, the hiring has continued. Morgan Stanley hired semi-conductor banker Tim Luke from Barclays as a vice chairman of technology investment banking for the US. JPMorgan hired David Fishman from Bank of America as head of its New York-based head of technology M&A. In London, Deutsche Bank hired Robert Farrington from Citi, as we predicted. 

America is where the action is. If you're a technology investment banker, life is about winning enormous deals, most of which are in the US. Information provider Dealogic says announced global technology M&A deals by value hit $1.1 trillion this year through to August 11th. This is the highest they've been since 2021, but with the lowest number of deals by volume for six years. 

In a winner-takes-all world, some technology bankers are winning more than the rest. As the chart below (also based on Dealogic data) shows, Goldman Sachs owns technology media and technology (TMT) advisory banking with JPMorgan and maybe Morgan Stanley. 

Citi and BofA are in a group below, along with Evercore, which appeared on the TMT scene in a big way in 2023. UBS disappeared around the same time. Some of the data is incomplete. 

Global TMT M&A rankings, 2020-2026

Source: Dealogic 

If you're a senior technology banker at a major US bank, you can make a lot of money. At top US banks like JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, one top New York headhunter, speaking off the record, said the people heading the business are on well over $10m. At Goldman this is bumped up even higher by the partnership profit sharing arrangement. 

 TMT bankers are proliferating as technology fragments into multiple sector groups. Where once there were "technology bankers" who did everything, there are now bankers specialised in hardware, software, the internet and AI. Software bankers are not having such a good year this year as AI challenges the Software as a Service (Saas) model. Even bankers running these subgroups can earn $8m+, says the headhunter. 

Running technology banking at Goldman Sachs or JPMorgan is not equivalent to running software banking at Deutsche Bank or Barclays. Goldman's TMT banking business is run by Barry O'Brien in New York and Jung Min in California. JPMorgan's is run by Chris Grose in California and Greg Mendelson in New York. Both banks are thought to have well over 30 managing directors covering the space in the US alone.

By comparison, smaller players like Deutsche Bank are thought to have around 10, which explains their absence from the chart above. The headhunter said this will make it difficult for Ed Liu to make a splash in the US market. "If you want to talk to software companies, you need to know a lot about software and even about the different types of software, from cyber and infrastructure security to front office software or software for the office of the CEO." This makes cracking the US market hard without any army of specialist bankers. Liu will at least be on a guarantee, he suggests. 

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