Lincoln International

Lincoln International is a Chicago-headquartered investment bank focused exclusively on the global private capital markets.

Founded in 1996 and celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2026, the firm has grown from a regional mid-market advisor into a global operation with more than 1,400 professionals across 30+ offices in 14 countries.

The firm is privately held and owned by its senior management and managing directors, with no institutional shareholders.

That structure shapes how the firm operates: advisors are invested in long-term client outcomes rather than quarterly performance targets set by outside owners.

Lincoln International positions itself specifically as a mid-market advisor, a deliberate choice that distinguishes it from the bulge bracket banks competing on mega-cap transactions. 

The mid-market is where most private equity activity actually lives: deals in the $100 million to $2 billion range, where seller relationships and sector knowledge matter more than brand name. Lincoln has built its reputation around exactly that segment.

The firm's ownership model is worth understanding. Senior management and managing directors own Lincoln International outright.

There are no institutional shareholders, no public float. That means the people advising on a transaction have equity stakes in the firm's outcome.

Chairman Jim Lawson has described the firm's core focus as connecting clients to insights and opportunities, a consistent through-line regardless of how long a relationship has been active.

As of 2026, Lincoln employs more than 1,400 professionals. In 2025 alone, 37 new Managing Directors joined, through a combination of acquisition (16), lateral hires (15), and internal promotions (6).

That talent growth is one of the more concrete signals of where the firm is headed.

The firm closed more than 430 transactions in 2025. That figure spans all four service lines and all geographies. A handful of deals stand out for their scale or strategic significance.

The most prominent was the sale of Filtration Group to Parker Hannifin for $9.25 billion, valuing the company at over $10 billion.

Lincoln served as sole financial advisor to Madison Industries on that deal, the largest single transaction in the firm's history.

In a market where most mid-market advisors rarely touch $5 billion-plus deals, it demonstrates the ceiling the firm is pushing toward.

Other notable 2025 transactions include:

• Advising Oaktree's Power Opportunities Group on the sale of Richards Manufacturing for approximately $2.3 billion
• Advising Lincoln Private Funds on raising $2 billion in equity for FTAI Aviation's inaugural strategic capital initiative, described as one of the largest dedicated aviation vehicles and first-time funds of 2025
• Advising CapVest on the recapitalization of Curium, a transaction in the nuclear medicine space
• Advising Verdane on its €635 million multi-asset continuation vehicle anchored by Arrive Group
• Advising Seven2 on a €400 million continuation fund involving Marlink and Crystal

Cross-border transactions make up a meaningful share of the volume. The firm's European network, which spans offices in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, the Benelux region, the Nordics, and Austria and Central and Eastern Europe, positions it to run processes that require coordination across multiple regulatory environments and buyer pools simultaneously.

Lincoln's offices are concentrated in the markets where private equity deal flow is densest.

The Americas presence is anchored in the United States, with offices across major financial centers, plus a Brazil office for Latin American activity.

The European network is the broadest, with offices in 10 countries. Asia coverage runs through China, India, and Japan. A Dubai office, opened in 2025, adds Middle East capability.

The Australia and New Zealand presence rounds out an Oceania footprint that is increasingly relevant as regional private equity markets mature.

That geographic diversity matters in a mid-market context because cross-border transactions in the $200 million to $1 billion range often require local deal knowledge on both the sell side and the buy side, something a single-country advisor cannot reliably provide.

Lincoln's 2025 transactions reflected this in practice: deals moved between European sellers and Asian buyers, US sponsors and European strategics, and Middle Eastern capital and globally listed acquirers, with Lincoln coordinating across those corridors from local teams rather than flying in advisors from a single headquarters.

Lincoln organizes its advisory practices around seven industry verticals:

• Business Services
• Consumer
• Energy Transition, Power and Infrastructure
• Financial Services
• Healthcare
• Industrials
• Technology

Healthcare and Technology drove a significant share of 2025 volume. On the healthcare side, transactions ranged from dental group consolidations in Europe to pharmaceutical investments in India and behavioral health platforms in the United States.

Technology deal flow included software carve-outs, SaaS recapitalizations, and several take-private transactions, reflecting the continued buyout activity in enterprise software even as public market valuations adjusted.

The Industrials practice handled some of the largest deals by value, including the Filtration Group transaction and the Richards Manufacturing sale.

Energy Transition, Power and Infrastructure grew as a dedicated vertical, with deals spanning grid technology, utility infrastructure, and industrial filtration serving environmental compliance needs.

The Valuations and Opinions group delivered more than 25,000 portfolio valuations in 2025 to a global network of private market investors.

That volume makes Lincoln one of the most active valuation providers to private equity and private credit funds globally. For fund managers navigating LP reporting requirements and fair value accounting standards, consistent and defensible valuations are operationally critical.

The group also delivered more than 150 fairness and solvency opinions globally, with 25 or more specifically across the EMEA region.

The Transaction Opinions and Board Advisory team achieved 22% year-over-year growth in opinion volume, an increase driven in part by rising M&A dispute activity.

In response, the firm launched a dedicated disputes practice in 2025 offering M&A dispute resolution and expert advisory services.

Separately, Lincoln publishes the Lincoln Private Market Index (Lincoln PMI), a quarterly tracker of private market performance built on the firm's proprietary valuation database.

The PMI is one of the more widely referenced private market benchmarks because it draws on actual portfolio company data rather than survey responses or public market proxies.

In Q4 2025, Lincoln completed its acquisition of MarshBerry, described as the firm's largest acquisition to date. MarshBerry is an investment banking and consulting firm focused on insurance brokerage and wealth and retirement sectors.

The deal significantly expanded Lincoln's Financial Services practice, adding relationships and transaction experience across insurance distribution, wealth management, and accounting and tax advisory.

The acquisition followed a pattern Lincoln has used before: buying specialized advisory firms to deepen sector capabilities rather than building practices from scratch.

For private equity clients active in insurance brokerage consolidation, one of the more active M&A themes of the past several years, the MarshBerry addition gives Lincoln credible specialist coverage in a space that rewards deep sector knowledge.

Lincoln launched its Private Funds Advisory group in 2022. By the end of 2025, the group had raised more than $12 billion in capital across 23 closed transactions.

That pace, averaging roughly eight closed transactions per year over three years, reflects both the growth of the GP-led secondary market and Lincoln's ability to compete for mandates against established placement agents.

The group works on three main transaction types: traditional fund fundraises, single-asset continuation vehicles, and multi-asset continuation vehicles.

The FTAI Aviation transaction in 2025, a $2 billion raise for an inaugural aviation-focused vehicle, showed the group's ability to execute on first-time funds in niche asset classes.

The Verdane €635 million multi-asset continuation vehicle demonstrated capacity for complex European GP-led processes involving multiple portfolio companies.

The firm's client base spans five main categories:

• Private equity firms, which represent the largest share of transaction volume across M&A, capital advisory, valuations, and private funds
• Private companies, including founder-owned businesses and family-owned enterprises considering a sale or recapitalization
• Public companies, particularly on carve-outs and divestitures of non-core assets
• Venture capital firms, primarily for M&A advisory on portfolio company exits
• Lenders, for debt advisory and capital structure work

Private equity firms are the anchor client type. Lincoln's depth in valuations, continuation fund advisory, and buy-side and sell-side M&A means a single private equity firm can work with Lincoln across multiple stages of a fund's lifecycle: from valuing portfolio companies quarterly to running a sale process when the time comes to exit.

Lincoln International enters its 30th year as one of the most active mid-market advisory firms globally, with 430-plus closed transactions in 2025, a $12 billion GP-led fundraising track record since 2022, and a growing footprint across the Americas, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Oceania.

For business owners, private equity sponsors, and institutional investors looking for an advisor with sector depth, cross-border execution capability, and no conflicts from institutional ownership, Lincoln's model is purpose-built for exactly that mandate.