Good morning! Thoma Bravo is handing Medallia to creditors after restructuring talks collapsed, a $5.1B equity wipeout on a business bought for $6.4B in 2021. Google Cloud is launching a $750M fund to help McKinsey, Accenture, and Deloitte bring agentic AI to clients. And 29% of employees admit to sabotaging their company's AI strategy, a number that jumps to 44% among Gen Z.

Palantir inked a $300M deal with the USDA to safeguard the food supply. AllianceBernstein shut down its hedge fund Arya after lack of scale caught up with it. And Wall Street is selling sophisticated quant trading to the masses.

Plus: RFK Jr. backs a ban on junk food TV ads, EQT warns AI fears will stall PE software stake sales, and longevity tips for body and brain.

Blueflame now has agentic content creation to accelerate your deal diligence and presentation. Request a demo today.

SQUEEZ OF THE DAY

$100M Fees Are Back

In the entire history of M&A, only 16 deals had ever generated fees of at least $100 million for a single bank advising the target. But in 2025, six banks did, and 2026 is already adding more. 

Goldman Sachs advised on the EA take-private, Hologic, and Avidity Biosciences, collecting $110 million, $109 million, and $108 million, respectively. Bank of America is set to collect $130 million for advising Norfolk Southern on its sale to Union Pacific. Allen & Co. made $100 million for the Warner Bros. Discovery deal. 

The math is straightforward, even if the numbers are staggering. Advisory fees are calculated as a percentage of deal value and paid on close, so when the deals get bigger, the checks get bigger. The average U.S. deal size jumped 30% in the first quarter alone, to $725 million, and hit an all-time peak of $1.02 billion in Q4 2025. 

Globally, corporate deals above $10 billion have just had their best quarter ever. The Trump administration’s lighter touch on antitrust has opened the door to transactions that would have faced years of regulatory combat under prior regimes, and bankers are sprinting through it. Median sell-side fees on U.S. public company acquisitions above $100 million hit 1.48% of enterprise value in 2025, up from 1.17% in 2019. The fees were already going up and the deals got bigger on top of that. 

The other factor nobody talks about enough is the talent premium. The best M&A bankers, the ones who have closed the biggest deals in a given sector and know every potential buyer in the room, have genuine pricing power right now.

Qatalyst got the Smartsheet mandate because the company’s CFO said the bank had a “surgical” understanding of possible buyers and had “mastered the narrative” of the business relative to getting a multibillion-dollar premium. That’s a specific, demonstrable edge that a board will pay for when the stakes are high enough. The $88 million Qatalyst collected on Smartsheet’s $8.4 billion take-private tells you exactly what that edge is worth.

Takeaway: M&A advisory fees in the early 1980s averaged around $10 million in inflation-adjusted terms, but now they’re routinely hitting $100 million or more for a single bank on a single deal. And 40 years of boards gaining negotiating power and deal sizes compounding upward have produced this moment. The M&A boom is real, the pipelines are full, and somewhere in the bullpen right now, a banker who spent three years grinding through the deal drought is having a very, very good April.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

PRESENTED BY BLUEFLAME AI

The Deal Content Engine

Introducing agentic content creation in Blueflame AI.

Generate Microsoft Excel sheets, PowerPoint presentations, and Word documents with Blueflame AI’s agentic content creation tools.

Automatically synthesize, structure, and format professional-grade outputs including pitch decks, CIM summaries, and financial models, all in one workflow.

This is AI designed for how deal teams actually work: fast, iterative, and under pressure.

Spend less time polishing outputs and more time on strategic thinking. What will you create first?

See Blueflame’s deal content creation in action.

HEADLINES

Top Reads

• Thoma Bravo to transfer Medallia to creditors amid debt restructuring (GuruFocus)

• Google launches $750 million fund for consultants to adopt AI (BB)

• Gen Z workers who fear AI will take their job are actively sabotaging their company's AI rollout (Fortune)

• Palantir inks $300 million deal with USDA to safeguard food supply (CNBC)

• AllianceBernstein shuts hedge fund Arya as lack of scale bites (BB)

• Wall Street brings sophisticated quant trading to the masses (WSJ)

• RFK Jr. says he would support a potential ban on junk food TV ads (CNBC)

• EQT warns AI fears will stall sales of private equity software stakes (FT)

• Tesla Q1 2026 earnings: beat on EPS but revenue misses estimates (CNBC)

• Google unveils chips for AI training and inference in latest shot at Nvidia (CNBC)

• ServiceNow stock sinks 14% as subscription revenue takes hit from Iran war (CNBC)

• Lululemon is picking a former Nike executive to be its next CEO (WSJ)

• Capital Group CEO sees more M&A coming for active asset managers (BB)

• Nvidia backs AI company Vast Data at $30 billion valuation (CNBC)

• If Spirit Airlines is liquidated, here's what might happen to the industry (NPR)

• Memory stock valuations spark debate over 'supercycle' potential (Yahoo Finance)

• Private credit BDCs' 2028 maturity wall poses risk, Moody's says (BB)

• As Blue Owl's strains worsened, its bankers pitched a long shot (BB)

• Best Buy names Jason Bonfig as new CEO, replacing Corie Barry (CNBC)

• Life sciences lab real estate is clawing back from disaster. Here's what that means for investors (CNBC)

• Wall Street group urges SEC to lift private asset trading ban (BB)

CAPITAL PULSE

Markets Rundown

Market Update

• Stocks moved higher, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq reaching new closing highs

• Leadership came from technology and communication services, reinforcing a risk-on tone

• Bond yields edged lower, signaling stable macro expectations

• The U.S. dollar strengthened, while global markets were mixed

• Investors are increasingly looking past geopolitics and focusing on earnings

Ceasefire Extension Calms Markets

• The extension of the ceasefire has reduced near-term geopolitical risk

• Markets are treating disruptions as temporary rather than structural

• Oil prices remain elevated, but forward expectations point to normalization over time

• If energy prices ease, this could relieve inflation and support margins across sectors

• The key shift is markets moving from fear → normalization mindset

Earnings Momentum Building

• Early earnings results are coming in strong, with high beat rates and solid upside

• Growth is being driven by technology, but supported across multiple sectors

• The market is rewarding execution, not just narrative

• Sustained earnings strength is reinforcing confidence at all-time highs

Movers & Shakers

• (+) Canopy Growth ($CGC) +21% after Trump is preparing an executive order to reclassify marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III.

• (+) GE Verona ($GEV) +14% because the energy company raised its full-year revenue outlook surging AI data center power demand.

• (–) Best Buy ($BBY) -5% after the retailer announced its CEO Corie Barry will step down October 31.

Prediction Markets

• Claude is just sooo good. Claude Cowork is a life hack.

• Trade on real-world events with Kalshi. Use code OWS to get a $10 bonus when you trade $10.

Private Dealmaking

• Reliable Robotics, an aviation autonomy systems company, raised $160 million

• Ray Therapeutics, a vision restoration biopharma startup, raised $125 million

• AcuityMD, a medtech software platform, raised $80 million

• Artemis, a provider of AI-cyber detection and automated response services, raised $70 million​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

• Serif Biomedicines, a biotech developing DNA-based medicines, launched with $50 million​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

• Expo, a developer tooling startup, raised $45 million

For more PE, VC & M&A deals, subscribe to our Buysiders newsletter.

BOOK OF THE DAY

The Risk Worth Taking

Description:
A personal and empowering story from Teri Ijeoma on leaving a traditional path to build a life centered on freedom and self-direction. The book blends memoir with practical insights on trading, risk-taking, and mindset, showing how financial skills can become a vehicle for independence. It emphasizes courage, discipline, and redefining success on your own terms.

Book Length: 240 pages
Release Date: July 14, 2026

Ideal For:
Aspiring traders, professionals considering a career pivot, and anyone looking to build financial independence and design a life with more freedom.

The biggest risk is staying in a life that no longer fits who you are becoming.

DAILY VISUAL

Let’s Get This Bread

PRESENTED BY MOSAIC

How Reliable Are LLMs for Financial Modeling?

AI has transformed Wall Street's language work: summarizing earnings calls, processing CIMs, drafting memos. But financial modeling is a different problem entirely.

LLMs are probabilistic. Run the same model twice, get two different answers. For an expert call summary, that's fine. For an LBO backing a multi-billion dollar decision, that's a structural flaw. A 99% accurate LBO is still a wrong LBO.

What firms need is purpose-built software where the math never varies. That's Mosaic.

Read the full article here.

DAILY ACUMEN
Default Settings

Almost every significant thing about your life was chosen for you before you had the capacity to choose it. The language you think in. The country you consider home. The assumptions you make about money, family, success, and what a good life looks like.

These arrived as defaults, and most people live and die inside them without ever once questioning whether they would have chosen them from scratch.

This is not a call to reject everything you came from. Some of those defaults are genuinely good. But there is a meaningful difference between a life you actively chose and a life you simply inherited and never got around to examining.

The question is not whether the defaults are right. The question is whether you have looked at them recently enough to know.

ENLIGHTENMENT

Short Squeez Picks

• The golden age of packing

• The single cause of cognitive decline and a cure

• Why spring cleaning is good for you

• How flowing water can model the economy

• How to keep your body and brain happy

MEME-A-PALOOZA

Memes of the Day

📣 Partner With Us: Get in front of an audience of over 1 million finance professionals, business leaders, and policy influencers. Submit a partnership inquiry.

📊 Wall Street Comp & Culture Data: Get the most detailed comp, carry, and culture insights across 800+ Wall Street firms. Explore the data.

📈 Grow With Us: Work directly with the Overheard on Wall Street team to scale your finance brand. Schedule your free consult.

🧢 Wall Street Shop: Explore our collection of finance-themed apparel and merchandise. Visit the shop.

📬 Deals Newsletter – Buysiders: A curated roundup of major M&A, private equity, and VC activity. Plus access to private deal flow. Subscribe here.