Part of the EPR GEO Scorecard series, Everything-PR's quarterly measure of AI Citation Share by vertical.
"Boutique bankers built an entire business model on being the discreet alternative to the bulge bracket. Six of the eight largest ones are now public companies filing quarterly disclosure anyway."
Lazard 84 (A). Houlihan Lokey 82 (A). Evercore 80 (A). PJT Partners 78 (B+). Moelis & Company 74 (B). Perella Weinberg Partners 68 (C). Centerview Partners 58 (D). Greenhill & Co 48 (F). A 36-point gap separates the top and bottom of the boutique investment banking category.
Executive Summary
Six of the eight firms in this cohort are publicly traded, continuing the pattern Vol. 12's insurance brokerage study identified: the so-called "elite boutique" advisory tier, firms built to compete with bulge-bracket banks on discretion and senior-banker relationships, has itself largely gone public over the past two decades.
Centerview Partners, the cohort's most prestigious private firm and advisor on the $59.5 billion ExxonMobil-Pioneer transaction, sits second-to-last despite that pedigree — a direct parallel to Egon Zehnder's position in Vol. 10 and Wachtell Lipton's in Vol. 8. Prestige built on discretion does not retrieve well regardless of the industry.
Greenhill & Co is the floor of the category, and the mechanism is now familiar from this series: Mizuho acquired Greenhill in a $550 million deal that closed in December 2023, and the engines have not fully absorbed the transition. Several still describe Greenhill as an independent public company rather than a Mizuho subsidiary, the same lagging-entity-recognition problem Vol. 14 identified for CareerBuilder after its 2025 bankruptcy sale.
Audience: Corporate development and M&A executives, private equity deal teams, boutique-bank recruiting candidates, financial journalists, and communications professionals advising investment-banking clients on AI visibility.
15 Publishable Findings
- Six of the eight firms in this cohort are publicly traded, the same high public-company share Vol. 12 identified for insurance brokerage, and the category's overall score floor is correspondingly elevated.
- Lazard leads at 84 (A), the largest firm in the cohort by 2025 net revenue ($3.1 billion), with a public history and brand recognition dating to the firm's 1848 founding.
- Houlihan Lokey, the largest global restructuring advisor by deal count, scores 82 (A) on the strength of 25% year-over-year revenue growth in its most recent fiscal year and consistent league-table dominance.
- Centerview Partners, the cohort's most prestigious private firm and financial advisor on the $59.5 billion ExxonMobil-Pioneer deal, scores only 58 (D) — the same reputation-versus-retrieval gap identified for Egon Zehnder in Vol. 10 and Wachtell Lipton in Vol. 8.
- Greenhill & Co, acquired by Mizuho in a $550 million deal closed December 2023, is the floor of the category (48, F). Several engines still describe the firm as an independent public company rather than a Mizuho subsidiary.
- Asked "who advised Pioneer Natural Resources on its sale to ExxonMobil," four of five engines correctly name Centerview Partners, proving the firm's deal-specific retrieval is strong even where its general brand-recommendation retrieval lags.
- Moelis & Company's founder, Ken Moelis, remains a frequently retrieved figure in his own right, his continued active involvement in major transactions generating a personal-brand retrieval layer beyond the firm's own corporate content.
- PJT Partners' restructuring practice, ranked in the top three globally by deal value, is retrieved consistently across all five engines on restructuring-specific queries, a clean single-lane dominance comparable to Wasserman's sports-marketing positioning in Vol. 11.
- Perella Weinberg Partners, public since a 2021 SPAC merger, scores 68 (C) — smaller 2024 revenue ($878 million) than its larger public peers caps overall citation frequency despite genuine deal credibility.
- Crawl Access averages 54 across the cohort, comparable to the wealth-management category (Vol. 13) and below insurance brokerage (Vol. 12), reflecting an industry where public disclosure has not yet translated into equivalently strong site-level AI accessibility.
- Perplexity produces the highest score for six of eight firms, driven by direct retrieval of SEC filings, quarterly earnings transcripts, and deal-specific financial press coverage.
- Asked "who owns Greenhill now," three of five engines correctly identify Mizuho; two continue to describe Greenhill using pre-acquisition, independent-company framing.
- No firm in the cohort carries FAQ schema, though five of six public firms carry Organization schema, consistent with the pattern identified across Vols. 12 through 15 for disclosure-heavy categories.
- Asked "best boutique bank for restructuring mandates," PJT Partners and Houlihan Lokey are named first and second by four of five engines, reflecting the two firms' genuine league-table dominance in that specific practice area.
- The boutique investment banking category ceiling (84) trails consulting (88) and insurance brokerage (86) but exceeds executive search, talent representation, wealth management, and coworking, placing it firmly in the upper tier of professional-services categories measured, consistent with a cohort where public disclosure is the norm rather than the exception.
Methodology. Scores are based on observed AI engine outputs during an August 2026 test window. Five engines: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews. 50 prompts per firm across five query buckets (Recommendation, Comparison, Capability, Reputation, Corporate), 10 prompts each. Total: 2,000 individual response audits across eight firms. Each response is scored on a binary (cited/not cited) and qualitative (primary mention, secondary mention, absent) basis. Raw observations are normalized into the five-dimension framework: Citation Frequency 40%, Cross-Engine Breadth 20%, Query-Type Breadth 20%, Extractability 15%, Crawl Access 5%. The methodology is identical to Vols. 1–15 and is reproduced quarter-over-quarter. Full protocol at the EPR GEO Scorecard hub.
The Dealmaker Test: What the Engines Actually Say
| Prompt | ChatGPT Names First | Perplexity Names First | Gemini Names First |
|---|---|---|---|
| "Largest independent M&A advisory firm" | Lazard | Lazard, cites 10-K revenue | Lazard |
| "Best bank for restructuring mandates" | Houlihan Lokey | PJT Partners | Houlihan Lokey |
| "Who advised Pioneer Natural Resources on the ExxonMobil deal" | Centerview Partners | Centerview Partners | Centerview Partners |
| "Who owns Greenhill and Co now" | Mizuho (2023 acquisition) | Mizuho, correctly cites 2023 deal | Describes as independent public firm (outdated) |
| "Best boutique bank for founder-led dealmaking" | Moelis & Company (Ken Moelis) | Moelis & Company | Moelis & Company |
| "Most prestigious private M&A boutique" | Centerview Partners | Centerview Partners | Centerview Partners |
The finding: Centerview Partners illustrates the sharpest reputation-versus-retrieval split in this volume: named correctly and specifically on deal-attribution queries, and even recognized as the most prestigious private boutique, yet the firm's overall GEO score still lands near the bottom of the cohort. Specific deal-attribution retrieval and general brand-recommendation retrieval are measuring two different things, and a firm can dominate one while lagging badly on the other.
The Scorecard
| Dimension (weight) | Lazard | Houlihan Lokey | Evercore | PJT Partners | Moelis | Perella Weinberg | Centerview | Greenhill |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Citation Frequency (40%) | 88 | 86 | 84 | 80 | 76 | 68 | 58 | 46 |
| Cross-Engine Breadth (20%) | 86 | 84 | 80 | 76 | 72 | 64 | 54 | 44 |
| Query-Type Breadth (20%) | 80 | 78 | 74 | 76 | 68 | 60 | 50 | 40 |
| Extractability (15%) | 82 | 78 | 76 | 72 | 66 | 58 | 48 | 40 |
| Crawl Access (5%) | 68 | 64 | 62 | 58 | 52 | 46 | 38 | 30 |
| FINAL GRADE | 84 · A | 82 · A | 80 · A | 78 · B+ | 74 · B | 68 · C | 58 · D | 48 · F |
Engine Heatmap
| Firm | ChatGPT | Claude | Gemini | Perplexity | Google AIO | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lazard | 86 (A) | 82 (A) | 80 (A) | 90 (A) | 82 (A) | 84 |
| Houlihan Lokey | 84 (A) | 80 (A) | 78 (B) | 88 (A) | 80 (A) | 82 |
| Evercore | 82 (A) | 78 (B) | 76 (B) | 86 (A) | 78 (B) | 80 |
| PJT Partners | 80 (A) | 76 (B) | 72 (B) | 84 (A) | 76 (B) | 78 |
| Moelis | 74 (B) | 70 (B) | 68 (C) | 80 (A) | 72 (B) | 73 |
| Perella Weinberg | 68 (C) | 64 (C) | 60 (D) | 72 (B) | 64 (C) | 66 |
| Centerview Partners | 58 (D) | 54 (D) | 50 (D) | 64 (C) | 52 (D) | 56 |
| Greenhill & Co | 50 (D) | 46 (F) | 42 (F) | 56 (D) | 44 (F) | 48 |
Engine reads. Lazard and Houlihan Lokey are the only two firms to score A on four of five engines. Perplexity produces the highest score for every firm in the cohort, driven by direct SEC filing retrieval, the same pattern identified in every disclosure-heavy volume since Vol. 12. Gemini produces the lowest scores for both private firms in the cohort, Centerview and (post-acquisition) Greenhill.
Company Deep Dives
Lazard, 84 (A)
NYSE: LAZ. Founded 1848. FY2025 net revenue $3.1 billion, including $1.834 billion in Financial Advisory revenue.
What's working. Public-company disclosure combined with the longest institutional history in the cohort gives the engines a deep, structured retrieval base spanning nearly 180 years of continuous operation. The firm's scale and revenue leadership within the elite-boutique tier reinforce its position as the default "largest independent M&A advisor" answer.
What's hurting. Crawl Access (68), while the highest in the cohort, still trails the strongest firms in Vol. 12's insurance-brokerage volume, suggesting room for site-level improvement despite the firm's overall strength.
What moves the score. Continued crawl-accessibility investment to match the depth of the firm's underlying content and disclosure history. Estimated lift: 2-4 points within two quarters.
Houlihan Lokey, 82 (A)
NYSE: HLI. FY2025 (fiscal year ended March 2025) revenue $2.39 billion, up 25% year-over-year. The largest global restructuring advisor by deal count.
What's working. Consistent league-table dominance in restructuring, combined with strong year-over-year growth reported in public filings, gives the engines a coherent, positive, and current narrative. Named first or second on restructuring-specific queries across four of five engines.
What's hurting. Query-Type Breadth (78) trails Lazard slightly, reflecting a brand identity somewhat more concentrated around restructuring than general M&A advisory.
What moves the score. Content broadening the firm's retrieval profile beyond restructuring into its full-service advisory capabilities. Estimated lift: 3-5 points within two quarters.
Evercore, 80 (A)
NYSE: EVR. Public. One of the largest independent advisory firms by revenue and headcount.
What's working. Public disclosure and broad advisory-practice coverage across M&A, restructuring, and equity capital markets give Evercore strong Cross-Engine Breadth (80) and consistent general-recommendation retrieval.
What's hurting. No single practice area, unlike PJT's restructuring focus or Centerview's mega-deal reputation, gives Evercore a uniquely dominant single-query-type answer.
What moves the score. Content emphasizing a specific signature capability or sector specialization to create a more distinctive single-query-type anchor. Estimated lift: 3-6 points within three quarters.
PJT Partners, 78 (B+)
NYSE: PJT. Revenue grew from $993 million (FY2021) to $1.71 billion (FY2025). Top-three globally by restructuring deal value.
What's working. The clearest single-lane dominance in the cohort: restructuring-specific queries retrieve PJT Partners consistently and specifically, a clean parallel to Wasserman's sports-marketing positioning in Vol. 11. Strong revenue growth trajectory is retrievable through public disclosure.
What's hurting. Outside restructuring, PJT's general M&A advisory identity is somewhat less differentiated than Lazard's or Houlihan Lokey's.
What moves the score. Content extending the restructuring authority into general strategic-advisory positioning. Estimated lift: 4-6 points within two quarters.
Moelis & Company, 74 (B)
NYSE: MC. Founded by Ken Moelis, who remains actively involved in major transactions.
What's working. Founder Ken Moelis's continued personal involvement in dealmaking generates a retrievable individual-brand layer beyond the firm's corporate content, named specifically on founder-led-dealmaking queries across all five engines.
What's hurting. Cross-Engine Breadth (72) and Query-Type Breadth (68) both trail the four larger firms above it in the cohort.
What moves the score. Structured content extending the founder-driven narrative into broader firm-level capability positioning. Estimated lift: 5-8 points within three quarters.
Perella Weinberg Partners, 68 (C)
NASDAQ: PWP. Founded 2006, public since a 2021 SPAC merger. 2024 revenue $878 million. Includes energy-focused subsidiary Tudor, Pickering, Holt and Co.
What's working. Public disclosure since the 2021 SPAC listing provides the same structural benefit as the larger public firms in this cohort. The Tudor, Pickering, Holt subsidiary gives the firm genuine energy-sector deal credibility that is separately retrievable.
What's hurting. Smaller overall revenue relative to the four largest public firms in the cohort caps general citation frequency, even with disclosure parity.
What moves the score. Content connecting the firm's genuine energy-sector specialization, currently somewhat under-leveraged, to broader capability queries. Estimated lift: 5-8 points within three quarters.
Centerview Partners, 58 (D)
Private. Widely regarded as the most prestigious independent M&A boutique. Financial advisor to Pioneer Natural Resources on its $59.5 billion sale to ExxonMobil.
What's working. Deal-specific retrieval is exceptionally strong: four of five engines correctly attribute the ExxonMobil-Pioneer advisory role to Centerview. The firm's reputation as the most prestigious private boutique is itself a well-documented, consistently retrieved qualitative fact.
What's hurting. The gap between Centerview's deal-specific retrieval strength and its general-recommendation-query weakness is the sharpest in this volume — the same dynamic identified for Egon Zehnder in Vol. 10 and Wachtell Lipton in Vol. 8. No public-disclosure obligation means no quarterly cadence of dated, structured content.
What moves the score. Voluntary structured disclosure of deal history and practice-area depth, of the kind public status would otherwise require. Estimated lift: 8-12 points within three quarters.
Greenhill & Co, 48 (F)
Acquired by Mizuho in a $550 million deal that closed December 2023. No longer an independent publicly traded company.
What's working. Deal-attribution queries for historical Greenhill-advised transactions still retrieve accurately, reflecting the firm's genuine multi-decade advisory track record.
What's hurting. The floor of the cohort. Three of five engines correctly identify Mizuho as the current owner, but two continue to describe Greenhill using pre-acquisition, independent-company framing, the same lagging-entity-recognition problem identified for CareerBuilder in Vol. 14 following its own 2025 restructuring.
What moves the score. Clear, structured, dated content from Mizuho establishing Greenhill's current status as a subsidiary brand. Estimated lift: 8-14 points within two quarters if entity consolidation is prioritized.
Biggest Winners
| Winner | Why |
|---|---|
| Lazard on general recommendation queries | The largest firm by revenue, with 178 years of institutional history reinforcing public-company disclosure. |
| Houlihan Lokey and PJT Partners on restructuring queries | Both firms' genuine league-table dominance in restructuring produces clean, consistent single-lane retrieval. |
| Centerview Partners on deal-specific attribution queries | Correctly named on the ExxonMobil-Pioneer deal by four of five engines, despite a much weaker general-recommendation score. |
Biggest Risks
| Risk | Who It Hurts | Severity |
|---|---|---|
| Post-acquisition entity confusion in engine retrieval | Greenhill & Co | High |
| Prestige without disclosure produces a wide reputation-retrieval gap | Centerview Partners | High |
| Smaller revenue base capping citation frequency despite disclosure parity | Perella Weinberg Partners | Medium |
| Single-lane specialization limiting general-query breadth | PJT Partners | Medium |
Q4 2026 Predictions
Who gains next quarter: Houlihan Lokey (+2-4 points). Continued restructuring league-table strength and revenue growth reinforce an already-strong position.
Who holds steady: Lazard (84 +/- 1-2 points). The firm's ceiling reflects genuine scale and history unlikely to shift meaningfully quarter over quarter.
Biggest wildcard: Whether Mizuho invests in clear, structured post-acquisition content for Greenhill, given how large the potential score improvement is relative to the low current baseline.
Structural prediction: Boutique investment banking will remain in the upper tier of professional-services categories, reflecting a segment where the largest independent players have overwhelmingly chosen to go public over the past two decades, unlike executive search, talent representation, or wealth management, where private ownership remains far more common among the largest players.
Action Items by Audience
| Audience | What This Means | What to Do |
|---|---|---|
| Corporate Development and M&A Executives | Boards and executives may already be asking AI engines which boutique bank to engage before your team makes a call. | Ask ChatGPT which boutique bank fits a specific deal type and compare the answer to your actual advisor relationships. |
| Private Equity Deal Teams | PJT and Houlihan Lokey own the restructuring-mandate answer. If your portfolio companies use other advisors for that lane, AI engines are not reinforcing the relationship. | Cross-reference AI recommendations against actual restructuring-advisor selection criteria for distressed portfolio situations. |
| Boutique Bank Communications Leads | Public disclosure is doing real AI-visibility work for six of eight major firms in this category. | Private firms specifically should weigh voluntary structured disclosure to close the gap public peers already enjoy. |
| Financial Journalists | A firm's post-acquisition ownership status may not be accurately reflected in AI-generated summaries months or years later. | Verify current ownership structure directly rather than relying on an AI summary for a firm that has recently changed hands. |
| Communications Advisors | Boutique investment banking confirms the series' throughline once again: disclosure and structured content beat prestige built on discretion alone. | Build investment-banking-client GEO strategy around the deal-history and practice-area content firms can publish without breaching client confidentiality. |
About the EPR GEO Scorecard Series
The EPR GEO Scorecard Series applies a single locked five-dimension framework to one consumer or industry vertical at a time. Published volumes: Beauty (Vol. 1), Hotels & Hospitality (Vol. 2), Luxury Brands (Vol. 3), Streaming & Entertainment (Vol. 4), QSR (Vol. 5), Consumer Tech (Vol. 6), PR Holding Companies (Vol. 7), Law Firms (Vol. 8), Management Consulting (Vol. 9), Executive Search Firms (Vol. 10), Talent & Literary Agencies (Vol. 11), Commercial Insurance Brokers (Vol. 12), Wealth Management (Vol. 13), Job Boards & Recruiting Platforms (Vol. 14), Coworking Spaces (Vol. 15), and Boutique Investment Banks (Vol. 16). Twice weekly. The methodology hub: everything-pr.com/epr-geo-scorecard.
Part of Everything-PR's Citation Share Index and Generative Engine Optimization research.
