2018 has been one of the wildest years in M&A since the financial crisis — here are the 40 biggest investment-banker moves

Old role: Cohead of global automotive

New role: Partner in industrials, focused on automotive

Month: July

Blake, an automotive specialist, decamped from Citigroup after 19 years, joining fellow top-40 mover Brennan Smith in the firm’s burgeoning Chicago bureau, which it opened earlier this year.

Old role: Head of West Coast life-sciences investment banking

New role: Senior managing director in healthcare investment banking

Month: July

A 12-year healthcare-investment-banking vet, Bliss started his career in M&A at Lehman Brothers and subsequently Barclays before his nearly three-year run at Credit Suisse. He’ll continue to focus on life-sciences deals — along with fellow Credit Suisse recruit Punit Mehta — in his new post with Guggenheim in San Francisco.

Old role: Managing director in investment banking

New role: Senior managing director in advisory

Month: July

Brundage moved to Evercore to start the boutique’s Dallas office. Industry agnostic, Brundage has advised a variety of corporate giants — industrial, energy, consumer, and tech — during his three-decade run at Goldman.

Old role: Head of energy M&A

New role: Global cohead of oil-and-gas investment banking and cohead of Houston

Month: May

One of the industry’s top energy bankers jumped from Morgan Stanley after eight years to run all oil-and-gas investment banking out of JPMorgan’s Houston office.

Old role: Head of M&A in the Americas

New role: Vice chairman in M&A

Month: June

Dupree was a key figure and significant loss for Deutsche’s struggling investment bank. He made headlines for presenting plans in April to Deutsche CFO James von Moltke for the German lender to break itself up.

Old role: Managing director, global consumer retail

New role: Senior managing director and cohead of global consumer and retail advisory

Month: April

Faessen and his Barclays colleague Adam Taetle jumped ship to run the consumer-retail practice at Evercore, part of a carousel of senior moves in consumer-retail investment banking this year.

The Dutch banker, who has more than two decades of experience under his belt, has advised companies like the beer giant Anheuser Busch InBev and Heinz.

Old role: Head of US investment banking

New role: Unclear

Month: June

Fleming exited RBC in June after failing to disclose an affair with a staffer. He’d been with the firm for 30 years and took on the top role in the Canadian firm’s US investment bank in 2010.

Old role: Global cohead of consumer-retail investment banking

New role: Partner in investment banking

Month: April

Frost, one of the most talented and coveted bankers in the consumer-retail game of musical chairs this past year, spent 17 years at Morgan Stanley before departing to become a partner at Goldman Sachs. He was in talks to join Evercore until Goldman swooped in to hire him, according to people familiar with the hiring.

The move is notable not just because Frost advised corporate giants like Unilever and Mars on megadeals — it’s also part of the 2018 trend of Goldman making senior lateral hires, something done sparingly in the past.

Old role: Vice chairman of investment banking

New role: Partner and vice chairman of investment banking

Month: February

Gallea is one of several lateral senior-partner additions this year by Goldman Sachs, which has been on a hiring spree. The industrials banker is said to advise top clients like United Technologies and Emerson Electric.

Old role: Cohead of M&A in the US

New role: Deputy chairman of global investment banking

Month: June

RBC adds a 30-year vet who spent the past six years running M&A for UBS in the US.

The bank poached Grafstein not long after Fleming left RBC as the head of US investment banking.

Old role: Global head of metals and mining, cohead of US industrials

New role: Partner and global head of metals and mining

Month: June

David Hammond built a top-three global metals-and-mining franchise at Credit Suisse before departing this year to take on a similar role as a partner at Goldman Sachs.

Before joining Credit Suisse in 2012, he spent 15 years in investment banking at Morgan Stanley.

Old role: Global cohead of chemicals

New role: Vice chairman and global head of chemicals

Month: July

Jeffries has nearly 30 years of banking experience, including long stints at both JPMorgan and Citigroup, andhas advised on numerous multibillion-dollar transactions. Among them: Valspar’s $11.4 billion acquisition of Sherwin-Williams in 2017 and Olin’s $5 billion buyout of Dow’s vinyls business in 2015.

Old role: Executive vice chairman of global banking

New role: Partner

Month: Reported in October

Before joining Centerview, Kaplan had spent most of career at Merrill Lynch, aside from a brief dalliance with Citadel Securities in 2009 after the financial-crisis merger of Bank of America and Merrill Lynch. And before his role as executive vice chairman, he held the top global positions in leveraged finance and capital markets.

Kaplan has a stellar reputation in the industry and is known for working on large, complex deals.

Old role: Managing director in real estate, lodging, and leisure

New role: Cohead of US real-estate investment banking

Month: September

In Kazim, RBC gets a 20-year vet with ties to some of the country’s largest real-estate companies.

Among the recent deals he has worked on: the nearly $20 billion merger of NorthStar Realty, Colony Capital, and NorthStar Asset Management in 2017, and Ventas’ $1.75 billion buyout of Ardent Health Services in 2015.

Old role: Global cohead of energy

New role: Out of market

Month: August

Khurana, an energy banker, split for the buy side. Hejoined the private-equity firm Quantum Energy Partnersafter a 13-year run at Jefferies, where in 2016 he was tapped as cohead of all of energy, the independent’s most important investment-banking division. He was cohead of the business in the Americas before that.

Old role: Partner and head of global semiconductor, electronics, and autotech banking

New role: Partner and cohead of global TMT

Month: May

Kiely, a top semiconductors investment banker and one of the most senior female partners at Goldman Sachs, agreed in spring to depart for Morgan Stanley to run its global semiconductors-and-autotech business.

But Kiely changed her mind and opted to stay put at Goldman, where she’d been since 1999, according to people familiar with the matter. She was then promoted to run all of TMT banking, one of Goldman’s highest-profile and competitive businesses, alongside the star internet banker Kim Posnett.

Old role: Deputy chairman of global investment banking

New role: Deputy chairman of global financial advisory

Month: July

Lawrence handled some of Rothschild’s top clients, including Intel, which last year bought Mobileye, the Israeli autonomous-vehicle-tech company, for $15.3 billion. He started in investment banking at Salomon Brothers in 1981 and worked at Credit Suisse as chief strategic officer before joining Rothschild in 2005.

Old role: Head of US sell-side M&A

New role: Managing director in financial-sponsors M&A

Month: June

After a successful stint running sell-side M&A at Credit Suisse, Lee, who has nearly two decades of experience under her belt, headed to Goldman to focus on orchestrating deals for private-equity firms and other strategic investors across sectors.

She works with David Kamo, who also left Credit Suisse’s sell-side team in 2016, to head up financial-sponsors M&A at Goldman.

Old role: Global cohead of healthcare investment banking

New role: Senior managing director in healthcare investment banking

Month: July

Mehta decamped for Guggenheim, alongside fellow Credit Suisse healthcare banker Jordan Bliss, to build out the boutique’s coverage of life-sciences companies.

Like Bliss, Mehta left Barclays for Credit Suisse in 2015; he was promoted to global cohead of healthcare investment banking a year later.

Old role: Head of corporate and investment banking

New role: Unclear

Month: September

Amid a tough year in investment banking for BAML — in which it had to reckon with the nearly $300 million Steinhoff loan loss, declining fees, and eroded market share — Meissner announced his departure in September. He vacated the firm’s top investment-banking role after an eight-year run at BAML.

Before the struggles, Meissner had succeeded in cleaning up the investment bank’s considerable post-financial-crisis carnage and fashioning it into a perennial top-three contender on the league tables.

Old role: Founder and CEO

New role: Co-chairman

Month: July

Technically speaking, Guggenheim acquired the restructuring firm Millstein & Co. — a 30-person advisory shop that since its founding in 2011 has handled clients like Caesars Entertainment, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and US Airways — in its bid for American Airlines’ bankrupt parent company.

Practically speaking, it acquired Millstein, the shop’s eponymous founder and legendary restructuring wizard, who became co-chairman of Guggenheim Securities.

Before founding his own shop, Millstein spearheaded the US government’s financial-crisis investment in AIG as chief restructuring officer of the Treasury Department from 2009 to 2011. He headed Lazard’s restructuring department for nearly a decade before that.

Old role: Head of global capital markets

New role: Out of market

Month: May

The top-ranking female investment banker at BAML quit to join the buy side with the private-equity giant Silver Lake, a client of the bank’s.

Murphy had a rapid ascent at as a leveraged-finance exec at BAML — aside from a one-year detour as a partner at Goldman Sachs — but reportedly secured an MD role with a broad mandate and authority at Silver Lake.