Houlihan Lokey’s global co-heads of corporate finance, Jay Novak and Larry DeAngelo, discuss the sector-focused strategy that earned their firm the award for Best Investment Bank for M&A in North America. Global Finance: Houlihan Lokey closed 458 deals in 2025, surpassing Goldman Sachs, Rothschild, and JPMorgan Chase in deal volume. To what do you attribute this success? Jay Novak: Our success stems from the strategy that we embarked on a number of years ago, which is to go very deep in sector