The Rainmakers: Meet the top-20 M&A bankers who closed the biggest deals of the year

The Rainmakers: Meet the top-20 M&A bankers who closed the biggest deals of the year

Dealmaking got off to a rough start in 2020, with mergers and acquisitions temporarily going over a cliff in the springtime as the world was met with a series of lockdowns and harsh restrictions to confront the spread of the coronavirus.

But by late summer and into the autumn, activity roared back, albeit with some notable differences “” such as virtual meetings in lieu of in-person management presentations, and limited celebratory fanfare for completed deals. 

In spite of a stormy start for M&A, top dealmakers at firms like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley still managed to deliver a series of marquee deals like S&P's $44 billion all-stock planned acquisition of data firm IHS Markit, chipmaker Nvidia's $40 billion acquisition of SoftBank-owned British competitor Arm Holdings, and Salesforce's $27 billion acquisition of Slack.

Ultimately, 2020's M&A volumes were down just 5% compared to the year before. 

To take a closer look at the people behind the numbers, Insider has partnered with MergerLinks, a financial intelligence platform that tracks deals and individual bankers, to present our second-annual edition of "The Rainmakers," a league-table ranking of the top-20 M&A bankers based on the size of the deals they orchestrated in North America last year. 

While Goldman Sachs had the most representation with four bankers cracking the