page_title: Investment banking
section_title: Top 10 banks
hierarchical_section_title: Investment banking / Industry profile / Top 10 banks
caption_attribution_description: This photo is of Wikipedia Takes Manhattan location code 82, 270 Park Avenue.
context_page_description: An investment bank is a financial services company or corporate division that engages in advisory-based financial transactions on behalf of individuals, corporations, and governments. Traditionally associated with corporate finance, such a bank might assist in raising financial capital by underwriting or acting as the client's agent in the issuance of securities. An investment bank may also assist companies involved in mergers and acquisitions and provide ancillary services such as market making, trading of derivatives and equity securities, and FICC services. Most investment banks maintain prime brokerage and asset management departments in conjunction with their investment research businesses. As an industry, it is broken up into the Bulge Bracket, Middle Market, and boutique market.
  Unlike commercial banks and retail banks, investment banks do not take deposits. From the passage of Glass–Steagall Act in 1933 until its repeal in 1999 by the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, the United States maintained a separation between investment banking and commercial banks. Other industrialized countries, including G7 countries, have historically not maintained such a separation.
context_section_description: According to The Wall Street Journal, in terms of total M&A advisory fees for the whole of 2020, the top ten investment banks were as listed in the table below. Many of these firms belong either to the Bulge Bracket (upper tier), Middle Market (mid-level businesses), or are elite boutique investment banks (specialized businesses).
  The above list is just a ranking of the advisory arm (M&A advisory, syndicated loans, equity capital markets, and debt capital markets) of each bank and does not include the generally much larger portion of revenues from sales and trading and asset management. Mergers and acquisitions and capital markets are also often covered by The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg.
caption: Many of the largest investment banks, including JPMorgan Chase, belong to the Bulge Bracket.
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