M&A Bankers Set to Earn $225 Million on Warner Bros. Deal as Boutiques Cash In

The investment bankers advising on Warner Bros. Discovery's proposed sale are preparing to work through the holidays—and stand to collect up to $225 million in fees for their trouble.

The payout, disclosed in deal documents, highlights how a handful of boutique advisory firms have carved out an extraordinarily lucrative niche in M&A advice. For the smaller firms on the Warner Bros. roster, the fees represent windfalls that dwarf their modest headcounts. Evercore stands to earn $55 million despite employing just 168 senior managing directors across its entire franchise. Allen & Company, with even fewer senior bankers, is eligible for $85 million.

The Warner Bros. advisors have already logged daily morning calls over the two-month period leading up to Netflix's acquisition announcement, including multiple sessions over Thanksgiving. Now they face additional work as Paramount Skydance mounts a competing bid, keeping bankers on both sides occupied through the Christmas and New Year period.

"When the NBA players play on Christmas Day, nobody says our holidays are ruined," one banker told the Financial Times. "They say isn't it great you're in the NBA. This is as good as it gets for investment bankers."

The economics of these deals explain the willingness to sacrifice holidays. Evercore's recent acquisition of London boutique Robey Warshaw illustrates the profit potential: five senior managing directors generated £60 million ($80 million) in annual revenue over the past three years. The highest-paid among them took home £40.5 million in a single year—roughly $54 million.

Robey Warshaw, which Evercore acquired in October, had advised on seven of the ten largest deals in UK history despite its tiny team. The firm's client list included over a quarter of FTSE 100 constituents. Its most prominent hire, former Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, recently departed for OpenAI.

Paul Taubman, founder and CEO of boutique PJT Partners, framed the deal environment in stark terms this month: "We see the world speeding up. There's more disruption, there's more dislocation, the cost of standing still is greater today than it's ever been."

For CFOs evaluating M&A advice, the Warner Bros. fee structure raises questions about alignment. The $225 million represents a substantial percentage of deal value spread across just three advisory firms, with the bulk flowing to boutiques whose entire business models depend on a small number of mega-deals annually.

The willingness of senior bankers to work through holidays reflects both the competitive intensity of M&A advisory and the asymmetric rewards. As Bloomberg's Matt Levine noted, for some bankers the work provides a convenient excuse: "Maybe you'd rather spend Thanksgiving negotiating a financing package than discussing politics with your uncle?"

The Warner Bros. situation also demonstrates how M&A complexity has intensified. With Netflix's offer now facing competition from Paramount Skydance, advisors on all sides will remain engaged through year-end, turning what was already a holiday-consuming deal into an extended sprint. For the boutiques involved, the fee potential justifies the sacrifice. For the bankers themselves, missing another Christmas Eve comes with the territory.