This is the second piece in a series on the bankers who run Wall Street’s largest mergers and acquisitions groups. The first looked at Tom Miles, global co-head of M&A at Morgan Stanley. This one is about the head of the franchise that has spent most of the past two decades at the top of the global adviser tables.
Stephan Feldgoise is head of Global Mergers & Acquisitions at Goldman Sachs. On 5 May 2026 he joined the firm’s Management Committee, the body through which chairman and chief executive David Solomon governs the firm. He had already left banking once. In 2017 he retired from Goldman. He spent almost a year investing, working with non-profits and playing competitive soccer. He then returned to the firm, and in 2020 was appointed to lead its global M&A business.
Goldman has said that in a single half-year of 2026 the firm advised on more than $1 trillion of announced M&A, which it describes as a first for any bank, citing Dealogic. League tables compiled by Mergermarket and LSEG also place Goldman first.
Who runs M&A at Goldman Sachs?
Feldgoise is head of Global Mergers & Acquisitions inside Goldman Sachs Global Banking & Markets. He sits on the Management Committee and on the Firmwide Client Franchise Committee. The firm’s current materials name him alone in the global M&A role.
The title was shared when he first took it. In September 2020 Goldman named Feldgoise and Mark Sorrell co-heads of global M&A, succeeding Michael Carr, Dusty Philip and Gilberto Pozzi, who became co-chairs alongside Tim Ingrassia and Gene Sykes.
David Solomon is chairman and chief executive. Dan Dees is co-chief executive of Global Banking & Markets.
In March 2025 Goldman named David Dubner chief operating officer of global M&A. He kept his role as global head of M&A structuring, with oversight of M&A capital markets and a new M&A Quants practice. Reuters reported that his team advised Honeywell on the three-way separation of the group, the transaction that followed years of pressure from Elliott Management and Paul Singer.
Why did he leave, and why did he return?
The public record of the gap is a Bloomberg profile published in 2023. Feldgoise retired from Goldman in 2017. He spent nearly a year investing in companies, working with non-profits and playing soccer at a competitive level, including an international tournament. He then went back to the bank. Three years after that return he was running global M&A.
Goldman’s own biography does not describe those months. It records MIT, GE, McKinsey and an arrival in the M&A department as an associate in 1997. The firm has not published a full account of what prompted the retirement, or what the year away changed about the way the group is run. Feldgoise is chair of the board of the New York Soccer Club.
How did he reach the top of the M&A group?
Feldgoise took a BS from MIT in 1992 and an MS in 1993, then a Harvard MBA in 1997. Before Goldman he was on GE’s manufacturing management programme and spent a summer at McKinsey.
He joined the firm as an M&A associate in 1997, became a vice president in 2001, a managing director in 2005 and a partner in 2008. He later ran the Financial Sponsors Execution Group, held roles in Global Natural Resources, served as co-head of Americas M&A and was global head of the Consumer & Retail Group. In January 2021 Goldman named successors to that consumer role so that he could concentrate on the global M&A mandate.
It is a sector path that became a generalist job. Tom Miles took the same shape of route from industrials into Morgan Stanley’s global co-head role.
What does Goldman’s M&A book look like?
Goldman has been ranked the leading global M&A adviser in most of the past twenty years, including 2024, and has been named Euromoney’s World’s Best Investment Bank for M&A in 2025 and 2026.
The figures in its 2026 Global M&A Outlook are global volumes up 40 per cent year on year; transactions above $500m up 74 per cent in the Americas, 150 per cent in EMEA and 300 per cent in APAC; and deals of $10bn or more reaching $496bn across 20 announced transactions, up 61 per cent.
Mergermarket’s first-half 2026 global ranking had Goldman at $1.23tn, up 71.2 per cent year on year, on 233 deals. JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley were the only other M&A teams above $500bn. In the same ranking, Goldman was first in Europe at $457.4bn and first in the Americas at $997.5bn.
LSEG’s first-half 2026 figures for Europe, the Middle East and Africa put announced dealmaking in the region at $676bn, more than double the 2025 level and a 19-year high. Goldman advised on 111 of those transactions, 44 per cent of the total value, its highest January–June share in the region since 2018. JPMorgan had 35 per cent. Rothschild advised on more deals by number. Goldman’s position rested on 15 of the largest 20.
How does Feldgoise describe the market?
In Goldman’s 2026 outlook Feldgoise said: “If I had to characterize 2026 in three words, it’s going to be technology, globalization, and ambition.” On the year just gone: “I wasn’t certain I would ever again experience M&A activity levels to rival those of 2021. But the markets in the second half of 2025 proved me wrong.”
The AI argument he has made is not limited to AI companies buying one another. He has pointed to software, data centres, semiconductors, real estate, power and transmission as a single set of conversations. That is the same complex that sits behind Blackstone’s $185bn data-centre book.
In a March interview with Bloomberg he said he remained “relatively optimistic” and expected new company formation in software. At Tulane’s Corporate Law Institute he put the structure of the market more directly: the largest transactions are carrying the volume.
What do the league tables show, and what do they not?
Goldman’s standing in M&A is built on being first. First depends on who compiles the list. Dealogic, Mergermarket and LSEG can all put Goldman first and still differ by hundreds of billions of dollars. In the first half of 2023 Dealogic and Refinitiv placed Goldman at the top; Bloomberg’s figures had JPMorgan first. Fortune’s account of that split was that banks treat league tables as a marketing instrument.
What the tables do show is concentration. Feldgoise has said the largest deals are carrying the market. LSEG’s EMEA half-year made the same point in another form: Rothschild led on the number of mandates, Goldman on 15 of the 20 largest.
What is still open?
Three things remain visible from here. Whether power, data centres, semiconductors and software continue to produce announced volume at this size. Whether Goldman remains first as JPMorgan stays close and as Morgan Stanley’s European value book appears in the global compilations. And whether the Management Committee seat is preparation for a larger role, or recognition of the book he already runs.
Feldgoise left Goldman, came back, and now sits on the committee that runs the firm. The league tables still put his group first. They also show where that position comes from. If the largest deals are carrying the market, Goldman is the bank most present on those mandates, and the bank most exposed if they stop.
Author: Tejas Bansal
See also:
Who Is Tom Miles? The Banker Behind Morgan Stanley’s European M&A Surge | Disruption Banking
Goldman Sachs Posts Record $3.4bn Investment-Banking Quarter | Disruption Banking
Goldman Sachs Bets on Asia as the U.S. Dollar Crumbles | Disruption Banking
