There are three investment banks, and there is everyone else
If you want to work in investment banking, you have your choice of firms. Big banks, little banks, medium sized banks. In reality, however, there may only be three banks that matter.
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Market intelligence provider Tricumen analysed the operating revenue per front-office full-time employee big investment banks in H1 of 2026. As the spider chart below shows, the employees of just three banks could be considered "above average" in performance for "capital markets activities." Those three banks were JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley.
The charts below indicated the average performance per individuals within a banking group. The dotted, circular line on each chart below indicates the average performance across the peer group average. Anything inside the dotted line is worse than average; anything outside is better. “Capital markets” is defined as all investment banking activity. That includes the “banking” category (which includes both M&A and debt/equity capital markets), as well as fixed income, currencies, and commodities (FICC) and equities trading.
Operating Revenue per front-office full-time employee, H1 2026
Goldman Sachs was the best bank for "banking" specifically. It benefited from an exceptionally strong investment banking performance in H1 of 2026, with revenue growing by 52% compared to the same period last year. At the same time, its headcount declined from 47,000 to 46,200 in the same period - Goldman had leaner teams that performed better.
Within sales & trading, performance was more mixed, with Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan’s fixed income, currencies, and commodities traders performing well. Within equities, both JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley’s equities traders were well above average.
JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley of course have another important distinction: they’re the biggest investment banks in the world, by quite some margin. According to market intelligence provider Dealogic, which aggregated year-to-date investment banking revenue, these three combined captured around a quarter of global wallet share in the industry.
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