Milan

By value: Goldman Sachs, then Mediobanca¹

In Mergermarket's 2025 Italy table by value, Goldman Sachs led with USD 59.3bn across 18 deals, Mediobanca was second with USD 38.6bn across 38, and JPMorgan third. Mediobanca is the Italian house that sits among the bulge bracket on value.

By count, the accounting firms¹

The 2025 table by number of deals is led by EY (70), Deloitte (64) and KPMG Corporate Finance (55), ahead of Mediobanca and Rothschild & Co. Much of Italy's mid-market M&A is advised by the Big Four's corporate finance arms, so they are a larger part of the Milan market than their profile in London would suggest.

The local boutiques rank¹

Equita was fifth in Italy by value in 2025 with USD 21.2bn across 22 deals, up from 22nd the year before, and Houlihan Lokey went from 15 Italian deals to 25. The Milan market has room for firms that barely register in London.

Mediobanca now belongs to Monte dei Paschi^2,3

Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena's offer for Mediobanca closed with 86.3% of the share capital, settled on 29 September 2025. Italy's leading domestic investment bank is now controlled by a commercial banking group, and anyone applying there should read its strategy in that light.

Milan's exchange is part of Euronext⁴

Euronext completed its purchase of the Borsa Italiana Group on 29 April 2021, for EUR 4,444m, joining Milan to the exchanges of Amsterdam, Brussels, Dublin, Lisbon, Oslo and Paris. An Italian IPO is now a listing on one of Euronext's markets, which is worth knowing before any equity capital markets interview in Milan.

Recruiting runs through off-cycle internships⁵

An account of the Italian market describes no structured summer internship: students take an off-cycle internship in the last six months before graduating and convert it into a full-time offer. The candidates come largely from Bocconi, LUISS, Politecnico di Milano and ESCP.

An Italian internship is training, not a job⁶

In Lombardy an internship (tirocinio) is treated as training, not as employment, and comes in two kinds. A curricular internship sits inside a course of study and follows the university's own rules; an extracurricular one, outside any course, follows the region's rules adopted in January 2018. Italian, EU and legally resident non-EU citizens can all take one.

Most of Bocconi's finance class leaves Italy⁷

Of Bocconi MSc Finance graduates employed a year after graduating (2022-23 class), 60.8% work outside Italy. The target that feeds Milan feeds London just as readily, so Milan and London draw on the same pool of graduates.

The EU bonus cap applies⁸

As an EU market, Italy keeps the cap on variable pay at 100% of fixed pay, or 200% with shareholder approval, which London dropped in October 2023. The Frankfurt page sets out the consequences for the shape of a package.