JPMorgan building small-cap M&A team for sub-$500M deals

Colleen Cabili

Wed, July 8, 2026 astatine 9:00 AM CDT 2 min read

JPMorgan Chase is forming a caller concern banking squad focused connected small-cap companies, targeting businesses valued betwixt $100 cardinal and $500 million, executives said.

Middle-market companies — those with valuations of astir $500 cardinal to $2 cardinal — person been the absorption of a abstracted JPMorgan inaugural that the small-cap propulsion is designed to complement, according to The Wall Street Journal. Annual gross from the midcap inaugural has surpassed $1 cardinal and is increasing astatine a complaint of much than 20% twelvemonth implicit year, Richert told the Journal. Richert said the slope is aiming for the small-cap squad to yet see much than 75 people.

Heading the radical is Michael Flynn, a seasoned of much than 20 years successful middle-market advisory who came to JPMorgan from G2 Capital Advisors, a Boston-based boutique concern bank. Rounding retired the aboriginal roster are Arash Farin, antecedently astatine Centerstone Capital, and Jamie Eastham, who is transitioning from wrong JPMorgan's Strategic Financing Solutions unit.

According to Richert, the slope views the small-cap conception arsenic territory its biggest rivals person mostly near uncontested. Serving those companies done commercialized banking gives JPMorgan a instauration it hopes to physique connected with the caller advisory offering. "Who other close present tin merchantability a $100 cardinal institution and successful the aforesaid time instrumentality SpaceX public?" Richert said.

The squad volition run retired of 5 cities — Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, and New York — positioning bankers adjacent determination lawsuit bases. Consumer and retail arsenic good arsenic concern services are slated to beryllium the group's archetypal manufacture priorities.

Richert pointed to 2 converging forces down the uptick successful small-cap woody flow: boomer-owned, founder-led companies are progressively facing the question of what comes next, creating what helium expects volition beryllium a important pipeline of sales, portion backstage equity funds targeting the little and mediate marketplace person attracted a surge of caller capital.

The midcap team, which has grown steadily implicit the past decennary oregon more, present numbers astir 400 bankers crossed the globe, the Journal reported. Dealogic figures cited by the Journal enactment JPMorgan's U.S. woody measurement supra $500 cardinal truthful acold this year, trailing lone Goldman Sachs successful the rankings.

JPMorgan said earlier this twelvemonth that CEO Jamie Dimon could enactment up to $20 cardinal toward an acquisition successful the coming years, though Dimon framed integrated maturation arsenic the bank's superior absorption and acceptable conditions immoderate woody would person to meet, including fitting into the bank's existing operation and culture.