Houlihan Lokey M&A Advisory Marketing Services Team

Houlihan Lokey's Marketing Services team is a dedicated practice inside the firm's Business Services Group that advises on M&A, capital raising and restructuring for marketing services companies. Houlihan Lokey, a global investment bank established in 1972, had its Business Services Group ranked the No. 1 business services M&A advisor for all global transactions in 2025, with 92 deals, according to LSEG data cited by the firm.

What does Houlihan Lokey's Marketing Services team cover?

The Marketing Services team sits within Houlihan Lokey's Business Services Group and serves clients ranging from early-stage businesses and midsized companies to large, publicly traded corporations in the marketing sector. The group publishes a recurring Marketing Services Market Update, tracking share price performance across a Houlihan Lokey Marketing Index of publicly traded marketing services companies alongside featured transactions its bankers executed.

Houlihan Lokey positions this team's value as running competitive, well-executed sale processes, using deep domain knowledge to position clients for synergy or scarcity value, and drawing on the firm's strategic and private equity relationships to bring the right decision-makers to the table. The firm frames this as combining sector expertise with the scale of a globally ranked bank, rather than choosing between a specialist boutique and a large institution.

How is Houlihan Lokey structured around marketing services?

Houlihan Lokey organizes marketing services coverage as a named sector inside its wider Business Services Group, alongside other specialty consulting and services categories. That group added a new Managing Director, Dave Buscaglia, in June 2026, covering specialty consulting and risk services, a hire that expands the group's adjacent coverage even though it sits outside marketing services specifically.

The firm also runs an annual promotion cycle for its Managing Director ranks, naming new classes of MDs in both 2025 and 2026 across its global offices, a structure that gives the Marketing Services team a pipeline of senior bankers rising through the firm rather than depending solely on lateral hires from competitors.

What M&A deals has this team completed?

Houlihan Lokey's Marketing Services team advised on multiple named transactions in the first half of 2025, according to the firm's own Q2 2025 Marketing Services Market Update.

The report's client examples span both agency-holding-company mandates, such as its work with IPG, and independent marketing services businesses like LiveIntent and The Acacia Group, indicating the team advises across the full range of ownership structures in the sector rather than concentrating on one buyer type.

What research does this team publish?

Houlihan Lokey's Marketing Services team publishes a Marketing Services Market Update roughly quarterly, most recently for Q2 2025, tracking transaction activity, valuation trends and public market performance through its Marketing Index benchmark. The firm calculates that index using rebased share prices for a diversified set of marketing services companies, with data sourced from S&P Capital IQ as of specific reporting dates.

The broader Business Services Group also produces market updates covering adjacent sectors, including a December 2025 Pharma Commercialization Market Update, showing the team's research function extends beyond marketing services into related business services categories that sometimes overlap with marketing clients on healthcare and pharma communications work.

Why does this Houlihan Lokey team matter to marketing and PR M&A?

This team matters because it gives marketing services owners access to a globally ranked M&A advisor's full transaction infrastructure, including its number-one-ranked Business Services Group, while still working within a dedicated sector team rather than a generalist coverage banker. Its work advising IPG twice in the same half-year period, on the R/GA and Huge situations, shows a team with repeat access to one of the largest advertising holding companies as both buyer and seller.

For agency owners evaluating strategic versus financial buyers, Houlihan Lokey's Marketing Index gives an independent, continuously updated benchmark for how public marketing services valuations are trending, distinct from any single deal's negotiated price. That benchmark function is something few boutique specialists in this directory can match at the same scale.

How does this team compare to other firms in this directory?

Houlihan Lokey's Marketing Services team is the largest firm profiled in this directory by overall size, since it operates inside a full-service global investment bank with a number-one-ranked Business Services Group, unlike boutiques such as Ciesco's advisory practice or SI Global's advisory practice. It shares that large-bank structure with Canaccord Genuity's marketing group, though Houlihan Lokey's marketing coverage sits inside a broader Business Services Group rather than a group paired specifically with technology and information services.

Where can readers find this team?

Houlihan Lokey is headquartered in Los Angeles, with the Marketing Services team's coverage detailed on the firm's own industry pages. The firm's official website is hl.com. Readers can find the full directory context at Everything-PR's M&A advisory firms directory.