Name: A Bank CEO on 'the Single Greatest Branding Decision We've Ever Made'
Uploaded: 2026-01-15T16:44:00Z
Duration: 18 min 49 s
Description: Scott Adelson, CEO of Houlihan Lokey, discussed the benefits of the bank going public, the company's culture, alternative investments, and much more.

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Scott Adelson, CEO of Houlihan Lokey, discussed the benefits of the bank going public, the company's culture, alternative investments, and much more.

https://m.wsj.net/video/20260115/c877b6b2-dcfd-4947-90f2-22aa279255b1/1/hls/manifest-hd-wifi.m3u8

A Bank CEO on 'the Single Greatest Branding Decision We've Ever Made'

Hello everyone and welcome to "At Barron's," I'm Andy Serwer, and welcome to our guest, Scott Adelson, CEO of Houlihan Lokey. Scott, great to see you. Thanks for joining us.

Thank you for having me, Andy.

So Houlihan Lokey is a moderate-size investment banking business. What does that mean in practical terms? What do you guys do?

Yeah, so I consider ourselves one of the independent investment banks, and there are a handful of us that are public companies. We happen to be the largest of them. And it is basically think of no balance sheet, typically, no sales and trading operations. It is an advisory-focused, in our case, global investment bank. We're focused in a few areas. Mergers and acquisitions, raising capital almost exclusively or predominantly private capital, financial restructuring. And then our legacy business of many years ago, which is all around financial advisory services.

Right, and what does that mean, financial advisory services, legacy department.

There's different components to it, financial opinions, portfolio valuations, very important today, as more and more illiquid securities needing marks on those securities around the world. And then something called TAS, Transaction Advisory Services, helping people in diligence, if you will, the financials for transactions.

Right, I mean, you were kind of known for that line.

That was the core, that is the smallest part of the business today is our FVA business. That was the original business that Houlihan Lokey was in.

Right, and how did you grow from that core then and expand into these other areas?

Yeah, I mean, you walk in a door and you tell somebody what something is worth and they say, "Look, there are other things to be done there." Usually for one reason or another, there was a purpose why they were asking what their company was worth. And it usually was they wanted to raise money. They were thinking about buying out a partner, whatever the case may be. And the ability to take that and become more of an advisor in that process was a logical extension.

Right, you know, you see a lot of these boutique investment banks here in New York. You guys are based in LA, I should point out, which is different, right, but.

All over the world, but headquartered.

But does that confer an advantage to you being in Los Angeles, a little different?

It's funny, I was just talking to the CEO of one of our other public peers today about that. It's interesting. I think that it has caused us to be a much more distributed company with offices, again, literally all over the world today. And we're likely to have a head of a group in Atlanta or in London as we are in New York or LA. And so I think that if we were New York-based, if you look at most of the New York-based firms, they are New York-based, and there's such a large talent pool here. It still is our largest office, but we have a fairly distributed leadership team.

That's interesting. So with regard to those competitors, the boutique banks here in New York, you know, sometimes there's this trajectory where they grow and then they flame out, or they become a lot bigger, like Evercore has become kind of a scaled operation. How is it that you can sustain sort of a middle market investment banking business? Is that something you think hard about?

We do. We're very focused on it. The way we think about it is certainly, and again, midcap is how we define ourselves. There are parts of our business that run up and down the size spectrum. Certainly our restructuring business does the largest restructurings in the world. It is really the M&A side and capital raising that is mid-cap focus. But if you look at that, the numbers, there's around the world, about 30 to 50,000 deals take place a year. 98% of those are mid-cap.

Right.

And so we're focused on that 98% larger.

And you're able to do business overseas? I mean, are you competing with local banks there and how difficult is that?

In some cases, yes. I mean it depends where it is. But I mean, at this stage it's in Europe, Rothschild, Lazard would be large local European competitors to us as opposed to, at this point, we're the second most active M&A advisor in Europe just behind Rothschild. But they've had a couple hundred year head start on us.

Right, yeah, I mean, I guess where I was going is that, you know, I could see, you know, with larger deals let's say the Goldman Sachs and the Morgan Stanley that sort of go across borders. But is it more difficult when you're doing middle market transactions out of country?

It depends, and some of our transactions are cross border-related and some are in country, so it really depends. And mid-cap is a very broad range of sizes. So clearly at the smaller end of that range, it is more likely to be in-country, and at the larger size more likely to be a global approach.

Right, right, right. And in mid-market M&A deals, is that connected in any way to this big boom in private credit?

They're related somewhat, I would say. Really, the boom in private credit started, and we were very fortunate. We really started that business for us right after the global economic crisis. And we realized that the depository institutions were really going to find it more difficult to be the suppliers of capital that they had been, and we began building up that capability. And today have by far the largest private capital group in the world. And it's a still in spite of all the growth, a very opaque market. And there it has been something that I think has a tremendous amount of legs left to it.

Right, what drives the business the most and drives the stock? What is it that say Wall Street analysts are looking for? What metrics specifically, Scott?

Well, there's a number of things, but at the end of the day it is performance, and continuing to have consistent performance and growth are the two most important variables. The market is, I don't wanna say indifferent as to where that growth comes from, but what they care about is that we continue to grow, and we're fortunate we're in businesses that we believe we can continue to grow for a lot longer in.

Are there any specific industries that you guys specialize in or especially strong in?

We cover every industry at this point. There are certain industries that we believe we have more white space than others, but we think that we have white space in literally every industry. We cover about, we don't even think about it on a sector basis. We don't even think about it on a subsector basis. We really think about it on a sub-sub and sub-sub-sub-sector basis. I mean, give you an idea, we have a.

What's sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub.

Yeah. Yeah.

Tell me about a sub-sub.

So it would be, we don't have business services for example. We don't have marketing services. We have a team that focuses on new pharma marketing services and another team on mature pharma marketing services. So very, very granular. And our goal is to be the most knowledgeable in that space in the world.

So that's maybe too granular for some of the bigger fish, but enough business for it to make it worth your while.

Correct, and for the bigger ones, again, if you are focused on only large cap, you can't have that type of granular focus. It is something that we are able to have.

I understand you've grown through a number of acquisitions, is that right, Scott? Talk to us about that.

That is correct.

How you've done that.

Yeah, we have believed that it is a fragmented industry, and there are thousands and thousands of investment banks around the world.

See, that's surprising. I mean 'cause you hear that oh, there's these names, there's a dozen names out there, but that's not the case at all?

That's 'cause you live in New York,

The New York lens is on, right? Blinders, right? Uh-huh, no, I know that.

Yeah, so I mean there really are thousands and thousands, and we have been very fortunate we've been able to do it quite successfully. And so because of that success we, you know, intend to continue to do it.

A lot of companies say they have a unique culture. What makes Houlihan Lokey's culture unique?

Yeah, I think every organization has unique culture. I think that that is a true statement. So I don't know ours is any more unique than anybody else's.

Better maybe.

But it is ours. It is ours. And I think we very much have a partnership culture, a very collaborative culture, a very entrepreneurial culture. A very, I'd say, analytical culture. Those are some of the attributes. But I mean, first and foremost, this is really partnership and collaborative.

No, I should have asked this at the top. Who's Houlihan and who's Lokey?

Good question. So Dick Houlihan started with, was a partner at an accounting firm, and he joined with somebody who worked for him, Kit Lokey. And they ultimately had two other people, Bob Howard and Jim Zukin as well. And very early on in the firm's history, Dick Houlihan left to go run Solitude Ski Resort.

Where's that?

It's a ski resort in Utah. And they talked about changing the name and they said, "Eh, we'd have to reprint everything. Why would we do that?" And they just let it be. But he left very, very early on. And Kit Lokey went on to run the firm for a number of years and only recently passed away. And a great friend and partner for many years.

Now you grew up in LA, but you found the firm somewhat serendipitously. Tell us that story.

I did, I was an entrepreneur prior to going to graduate school. I grew up in LA, I went to USC undergrad and went to graduate school, and thought I was gonna start another company. And somebody convinced me at the age of 27 maybe I didn't know everything and should work for somebody for a little while. I took that sage advice and went out and got a whole bunch of offers at the time, and was taking a walk one night with a friend of mine 'cause I had to make a decision, walked by Houlihan Lokey's offices, which at the time were all of one quarter of one floor of a five story building, and said, "Yeah, it's walking distance from my house, I'll work there." And so at the time I did not really think it was a particularly important decision. Didn't carry much weight 'cause I didn't think it was what I was gonna do very long, almost 40 years ago. It's been an incredible ride and one of the greatest joys of my life is getting to work with the incredible colleagues that I've had today and over the years.

40 years you've been there. Okay, first of all, I've gotta say you started when you were 10 I guess then, but besides that, like what made you stay, Scott, I mean you know, you were an entrepreneur. 40 years is a very long time to stay at any company. What's kept you there?

Super easy. People. To me, business is all about people, and it is being around so many just bright, energetic, driven people is so rewarding, and it really is one of the great things about the industry that I've chosen to be a part of that it doesn't get talked about a lot. There are a lot of other things that get talked about, that I don't think gets as much airtime as it should, and it is really one of the great joys.

A lot of talk about alts, private markets, we talked about private credit. A lot of talent seems to be going there as opposed to into investment bankings. It still makes sense for a young person to pursue a career there?

Absolutely, I mean from, again, from my perspective, incredibly rewarding career. I think that it is still recognized to be a unbelievable training ground for people. I do think that some percentage of those people do decide to move on and do other things, and that's perfectly fine, that is part of the ecosystem, if you will. But we're fortunate we have a very large number of people who started as analysts or associates and have worked their way up through the organization. And I hope that's always true. Don't know that it will be, but I mean I certainly hope it will be. But clearly the growth in private equity and private credit has been something that has been opportunities for a broad array of people. But they go on and hopefully have had a great experience. We've trained them well, many times become clients. That's okay. That's all part of the ecosystem.

You went public a little over 10 years ago, and my question is why? And I've seen, you know, your peers go public as well, many of them. Why was it important? Why didn't you just stay private?

Yeah, I can honestly say single greatest branding decision we've ever made. There were a number of structural reasons we did it, but really one of them was we were continuing to grow internationally. And as we talked about, there's thousands of investment banks, and you show up and everybody is somehow number one in something, that's something that people aren't seem to be able to manufacture. And as very different sitting there saying, we have a 13, 14, whatever is billion dollar market cap traded on a New York stock exchange, when you start a conversation that puts you in a very different league. And so the decision to go public, it's just the amount of, we honestly, we were private, we probably wouldn't be sitting here together right now. Just a reality. And so the opportunities to get the brand awareness is very different being public than private.

Shifting gears a little bit, what about the macro environment right now? What are you seeing out there based on your business in terms of activity, in terms of where you think rates are heading, GDP? Talk to us about your perspective, Scott.

Yeah, I mean, not an economist by training. So take that as a given, and it has been a continually improving market with a relatively high degree of uncertainty tied to it I would say, both geopolitical and otherwise, that has caused it not to just be a, you know, super steep slope up and the right, but it has just been improving. I've been saying for a fairly long period now, quarter by quarter, if not month by month. And so the reality of, which we have different parts of our business, so I'm talking about really the M&A side when I'm talking about that, our restructuring side, obviously, elevated rates are a plus for. I am quite bullish on where markets are heading right now. I do think that rates are heading down. That certainly is the feeling. And again, the other thing as we're sitting here talking about, and your questions are probably mostly directed at the US, but with the offices all over the world, I spend my time as much thinking about what's gonna happen in Japan or what's happening in Germany or Australia. And so the US obviously being the largest part of our market, and it does tend to lead other markets, but you do have to think about it on a global basis.

For sure. And what about the regulatory environment? There was talk earlier in the Trump administration about a lot of deregulation, there has been some. I don't know if that pertains to your business. Is there any sort of regulatory relief that you'd like to see?

Yeah, it isn't the same for us as some of our peers that are focused on much larger transactions that have big antitrust issues. Most of the transactions we're doing are not driven by antitrust concerns. And so that is not as much of an issue for us. Obviously most of the companies that we work with would like to have less regulation and make their lives easier in many ways. But I mean, that's not, that's just day-to-day business. There's nothing in particular.

Right, the stock has been a great performer over the past decade since you went public, had a little bit of a downdraft this fall. What's going on both long term and then the short term? What have been the challenges? What does the market not understand about your business then?

I think that if you take a look at our entire sector there, the investors were expecting perhaps a bit more of a J curve return to M&A activity than has actually occurred. And in spite of the fact that record results, it's just how much of a record they are. And that's true for a number of us. I think that the long term feel unbelievably good about the stock, and one of our largest holders. And am a big believer in the growth across all of our areas. Whether that is restructuring, whether that's M&A, whether that's capital solutions or our FBA business all have tremendous growth opportunities around the world.

And so what are investors, you know, need to understand about why to get in the stock right now, what's the best reason for someone to buy your stock?

In a very unique position relative to our public peers in our space, that mid-cap focus for our M&A is something that is fundamentally different, focused on that 98% of the market. I think that when you look at our business and the upside potential of the cyclical businesses and the downside protection of our countercyclical businesses, it's a very compelling financial story. And all you have to do is look at the 40-odd years of history of up and to the right. It's with very strong cash flow performance as well.

And final question, Scott, what do you like to do outside of the office to, you know, let out some steam or relax a little bit? Besides working as an investment banker, probably 80 hours a week.

I love the outdoors, and anything that's outdoors. I love hiking, I love biking and skiing. Anything active, being active, spending time with family and friends and good, good food and traveling the world. So I feel incredibly fortunate, and of course giving back as well, that would be an another important component, not just for myself, but for the organization as a whole. We feel we're incredibly fortunate, and wanna make sure that everybody gets an opportunity to give back.

Sounds like a lot to keep you busy. Scott Adelson, CEO of Houlihan Lokey, thank you so much for joining us.

Beyond my pleasure, thank you Andy, so much for having me.

This is "At Barron's," I'm Andy Serwer. We'll catch you next time.