Scott J. Adelson
Chief Executive Officer / Houlihan Lokey, Inc.
Houlihan Lokey, Inc. has made itself one of the world’s most active and consistently profitable investment banks by focusing its M&A and finance businesses on the universe of mid-cap companies underserved by larger rivals and hungry for greater interaction with the booming alternative-asset market while its restructuring business advises on situations of all sizes.
What investment bank advised the most global mergers and acquisition deals in 2024?
According to the London Stock Exchange Group Plc., the top spot in that league table wasn’t won by a giant Wall Street “bulge bracket” bank or even an established European financial giant.
The winner: Houlihan Lokey, Inc.
Last year, the 53-year-old, Los Angeles-based institution’s 514 such transactions outpaced all rivals, including No. 2 Rothschilds, No. 3 Goldman Sachs, No 4 JP Morgan and No. 5 Morgan Stanley.
That’s an impressive performance by any standard. It’s even more impressive considering the bank’s independence. While now a global institution, Houlihan Lokey’s roots are on the U.S. West Coast rather than on Wall Street, and the company has long staked its flag in the financial markets by advising mid-cap companies rather than giants.
And the man leading that charge into new and evolving markets is Chief Executive Officer Scott Adelson, 63.
Sticking to the Plan
A graduate of the University of Southern California and University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Adelson, a nearly four-decade veteran of Houlihan Lokey, took over from long-time CEO Scott Beiser in March 2024.
Adelson considers his appointment a signal to investors that Houlihan Lokey very much intends to stick to its core values and maintain a team that has driven growth and change at the company for years.
I’ve been with Houlihan Lokey for thirty-eight years and there has been a group of us that have been a running the business for a very long time,” Adelson told CEO North America. “Effectively, my appointment is this is really just changing seats at a very small table.’
“We are really living in exciting times, and there is a real transformation occurring across finance and across the globe.”
In the past 10 years, the company has posted a profit in every quarter. That profit as measured by year-on-year net income also grew in all but 12 of the last 40 quarters despite world-wide fallout from the European debt crisis, Brazilian economic crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic.
In Houlihan Lokey’s 2025 fiscal year ending March 31, the company posted adjusted net income of $434 million, a 40% percent increase over a year earlier and its second-highest adjusted profit ever.
“I’ve been telling investors that if you liked Houlihan Lokey before I became CEO you will like it now, and if you didn’t like it before, well, you’re not going to like us now because not a lot of changes under me,” Adelson said. “I mean we really have had a vision in the strategy, and I’m just continuing to work it.”
Leader in Restructuring
In the broad sense, Adelson is committed to growing the business areas the company is already in today: corporate finance; financial restructuring; and financial and valuation advisory.
“We believe there is a tremendous amount of growth in each one of those areas, and we will continue to be able to deliver the type of service we have in the past,” he said. “We’ve consistently stated to the market that we will be able to continue to grow in all three segments,” he added.
Adelson sees particularly good opportunities in Houlihan Lokey’s restructuring business and the company can draw on decades of dealing with some of the most complicated restructurings in North American and international corporate history. Those include Enron, WorldCom and Lehman Bros. where it represented creditor groups.
Today, Houlihan Lokey’s financial-restructuring practice is the largest of any investment banking firm in the world. Since 1988 it has advised on more than 1,800 restructuring transactions and helped resolve aggregate debt claims of more than $3.8 trillion.
Houlihan Lokey’s reach is also global with restructuring-practice professionals in offices around the world. Its 88 Global Distressed Debt & Bankruptcy Restructuring Deals in 2024 were nearly 50% greater than the next biggest competitor, PJT Partners with 59 deal, according to LSEG and the Houlihan Lokey website.
“The market is incredibly fragmented due to the different ways investors look at situations. And it’s a matter of really being able to understand the situation that our client is in and the opportunity that exists and matching that.”
Experience Pays Off
This volume of deals and long experience is coming in handy as Houlihan Lokey expands its businesses in Asia and Europe.
“If you take a look at our restructuring business, for example, one of the great exports of the United States that nobody really talks about is complicated balance sheets,” Adelson said.
“As complicated balance sheets have worked their way around the world, some percentage of those ultimately wind up in restructurings,” he added. And Adelson expects that business to keep growing.
“If you look at our corporate finance business, it really is a combination of two businesses: our M&A (mergers & acquisitions) business, with all the industry groups, and our capital-solutions business,” Adelson explained. “The amount of M&A that is taking place around the world continues to grow.”
“Obviously, the economy grows and contracts in cycles, but we focus on the mid-cap segment − companies worth between $250 million and about a few billion dollars − while most of our peers are focused on companies above that, the large-cap deals,” he said.
Thinking Globally
“But that’s where we’re focused,” he continued. “That mid-cap segment is really 98% of the market. “We like that end of the market, and we’re, we’re very happy with the position we’ve built there.”
And Adelson ought to be happy with that position as he has been central to building it for the last quarter century.
He has been at the center of the company’s internationalization since at least 2000 when he became global co-head of corporate. Up to that point most of the company’s operations were focused on the United States.
Soon offices were opened in Europe and Asia, and a 51% stake in Houlihan Lokey was arranged with the U.S. unit of Japan’s ORIX Corp, in 2006.
In 2013 he added co-president to his other titles and helped steer the company’s initial public stock offering as he became Houlihan Lokey’s co-president. In August 2015, he was there for the initial public offering of Houlihan Lokey stock on the New York stock exchange.
Additional growth has come in the U.S. and abroad since, both organically and through takeovers, including the 2021 acquisition of GCA Corp. which boosted Houlihan Lokey’s position in Asia and Europe.
“We really are built differently. We are built around global industry and product groups rather than local geographies.”
Bridging Fragmented Markets
“We plan to continue on a path of growing organically through internal promotions and hiring talented individuals that we think are a strong cultural fit and bring a degree of expertise,” Adelson said.
While the company seeks to grow organically, expanding existing practices and headcounts, the company will also continue to acquire competitors, in part because the market is extremely fragmented, he added.
Adelson considers that fragmentation, plus Houlihan Lokey’s global vision, independence and consistent global strategy to be the key reasons it has rocketed to top positions not only in the United States but also in Europe and Asia.
“In Europe, for example, we are truly fundamentally different than our peers,” Adelson said. “Most of them in Europe have been doing this a lot longer, hundreds of years longer than we have in some cases. And yet, in very short order, we have become one of the most significant players in the European marketplace.”
“For example: if you’re talking to our chemicals bankers in Europe, they are in a daily dialogue with our chemical bankers in the US and our chemical bankers in Asia,” he explained. “Therefore, you are getting a view of everything that is happening in the world differently than some of our peers that run, for example, a French P&L (Profit and Loss book) and a German P&L and so on.”
Independent Voice, Alternative Assets
Perhaps most importantly, Houlihan Lokey tries to provide independent advice, avoiding conflicts of interest.
“We aren’t like the Goldman Sachs of the world that have a balance sheet they are trying to leverage with their clients and also provide the clients with advice,” Adelson said. “We are unconflicted and only utilize our advice and access our relationships around the world.”
Which helps Houlihan Lokey’s clients in the expanding world of alternative assets where valuation can be difficult, and the risk of conflict abounds.
“I think probably the greatest example of that today is in the private-credit universe, which is obviously exploded tremendously over the past few years and is a quite complex ecosystem with a handful of very large players,” Adelson said.
“As the single largest advisor to the alternative asset class of any investment bank, we really like the position that we have in the world,” he concluded. “At the end of the day, we are driven by a culture of partnership, collaboration and a one firm mentality that is fairly unique in our industry.”
