igc is Leading in M&A upper mid-cap in the Leaders League 2027 ranking
Reading time
13 minutes
Date
Oct 9, 2026
Author
Murilo Oliveira — Partner, igc Partners
The entrepreneur who decides to sell the company almost always does so only once in a lifetime. On the other side of the table is a buyer that acquires companies frequently, with an investment committee, a due diligence model and lawyers who have already seen every clause. The asymmetry is real, and it begins before the negotiation: it begins with the choice of who will conduct the process.
This choice defines a good part of the outcome. It is the advisor who builds the competition between buyers, who decides to whom the company will be presented, who sustains the price when due diligence tightens and who negotiates the terms that determine how much of the headline value actually reaches the seller's account. A good advisor does not add a detail to the process. They change the entire process.
That is why independent market research exists. It answers, with method and a verifiable source, the question the entrepreneur alone would have no way of answering: which firms the market and, above all, the clients themselves consider the best in each segment. That is exactly the work of Leaders League, and it is there that igc reached the Leading tier in the 2027 edition.
Leaders League is a research house based in Paris that maps and classifies professional service providers in dozens of countries, among them law firms, audit firms, investment banks and independent financial advisors. Its lists are followed by investors, by the legal and finance departments of large companies and by the specialized press.
What distinguishes this research is the depth of the process. The classification is neither bought nor self-declared: it is determined over a cycle of approximately four months, three of data collection and one of processing and defining the tiers.
Four declared criteria apply to these sources: the nature, complexity, size, volume, innovation and quality of the transactions conducted; the recognition and reputation of the firm among clients, peers and third parties; the size and expansion of the team, with the track record of those who conduct the client relationship; and the prestige, diversity and internationalization of the client base.
Leaders League organizes the firms of each ranking into five tiers of recognition. Leading is the highest, reserved for firms that stand out simultaneously in quality of transactions, reputation, team and client base. Below Leading, where igc stands, the ladder continues with Excellent, high-level performance just below the top; Highly recommended, a consolidated and well-regarded practice in the market; Recommended, a significant presence in the segment; and Valuable practice, performance recognized by the research.
In the 2027 edition of the Brazilian ranking of independent advisors in M&A upper mid-cap, published on October 6, 2026, about thirty firms were evaluated and distributed across these five tiers. Only five reached the Leading tier, and igc is one of them. Within each tier, the firms are listed in alphabetical order, with no internal hierarchy.
The same research classifies igc in the Leading tier also in Capital Markets, in the Debt Capital Markets subarea, which corresponds to the firm's Capital Solutions area. Being at the top of both lists means the entrepreneur finds, under the same structure, first-rate advisory both to sell the company and to capitalize it.
This qualitative recognition adds to another, of a quantitative nature. In the Mergermarket ranking, which counts transactions actually completed, igc leads in number of operations. They are two different lenses on the same market, and the firm is at the top of both.
Nature. Mergermarket is quantitative, from an international transaction database; Leaders League is qualitative, from primary market research.
What it measures. Mergermarket counts transactions actually completed, not announcements or mandates; Leaders League measures the perception of clients, peers and third parties about the last twelve months.
What it demonstrates. Mergermarket shows how often the firm takes processes through to closing; Leaders League, how those who have already hired assess the experience.
igc's position. In Mergermarket, leadership in number of transactions; in Leaders League, the Leading tier in M&A upper mid-cap and in corporate debt.
Independent research such as Leaders League's is the best tool available to begin this choice. A few precautions help extract everything it offers.
Best practices:
Common mistakes:
A mid-sized family manufacturer receives an informal approach from a competitor and considers negotiating directly. Conducted as a structured process, the same operation comes to involve several qualified interested parties advancing in parallel.
The difference is of nature, not of degree. With a single buyer, there is a conversation. With several, there is a market, and it is the market that sets the price. Sustaining this simultaneity, including in the face of requests for early exclusivity, is one of the competencies that the client assessment captures.
A services company starts from the hypothesis that its natural buyers are the three national competitors in the sector. The mapping reveals a foreign group looking to enter Brazil, willing to pay for market access and not only for the company's results.
Reaching this buyer requires a mapped base and active international relationships. At igc, there are more than 6,000 potential buyers in Brazil and abroad, and more than 50% of transactions involve foreign buyers, with the support of the Miami operation.
A sale process takes several months between the decision and the closing, and due diligence is usually the most sensitive phase. Keeping the same interlocutor throughout this entire period preserves the understanding of the business at the moment it matters most, and avoids the loss of momentum that a change of team causes.
At igc, the partner who opens the process is the same one who closes it. The 35 partners are owners of the firm, and the conversation with the entrepreneur takes place from owner to owner, between people who carry the same type of risk.
The examples show what first-rate work delivers over the course of a process. Below, direct answers to the most common questions about the ranking and about choosing the advisor.
In the 2027 edition of the Brazilian ranking of independent M&A advisors in the upper mid-cap segment, published on October 6, 2026, igc is in the Leading tier, the highest on the list, in a group of five firms among about thirty evaluated.
It is the maximum level of recognition awarded by Leaders League in a ranking, reserved for firms that stand out simultaneously in quality of transactions, market reputation, team composition and client-base profile. Below it come Excellent, Highly recommended, Recommended and Valuable practice.
It is an international research house based in Paris that classifies professional service providers by country and area of activity. Its lists are followed by investors, by executives of large companies and by the specialized press as a market reference.
Through a research cycle of approximately four months that combines four sources: the firms' documentary submission, the feedback of clients contacted on behalf of the research itself, peer review and the reading of qualified third parties in the ecosystem. The classification results from cross-referencing these sources.
The firm takes part only in the submission stage, presenting its transactions and its team. The other sources are collected independently by Leaders League, including client feedback, which is obtained on behalf of the research and not of the firm under evaluation.
They are complementary. Mergermarket counts transactions actually completed in a period and a region, and in it igc leads in number of operations. Leaders League measures market perception through primary research, with emphasis on client feedback. igc is at the top of both.
This is the ranking of independent advisors. Leaders League publishes separate lists for investment banks, which fulfill distinct roles in the market and are frequently buyers and counterparties in M&A operations.
It is the upper band of the mid-sized market: companies with enough scale to attract significant strategic buyers and private equity funds, but which generally remain under family or founder control. It is the segment in which igc concentrates its sell-side activity.
Also in Capital Markets, in the Debt Capital Markets subarea, likewise in the Leading tier. It is the front of corporate debt structuring and fundraising, which at the firm corresponds to the Capital Solutions area.
The Leading tier in the Leaders League 2027 is not a title declared by the firm. It is the result of independent research that listened to clients, peers and market third parties over four months, and that placed igc in the top group of the segment it chose to work in from day one. For the entrepreneur evaluating whether to sell the company, it is the confirmation, coming from outside, of something only those who have already been through the process could attest to.
igc Partners is the largest M&A firm in Latin America, with exclusively sell-side activity since 1997 and more than 550 completed transactions. The firm operates as ten sector boutiques within a single structure, in Agribusiness, Business Services, Consumer, Retail & Education, Industrials, IT & Professional Services, Chemicals, Real Estate, Healthcare, Financial Services and Tech, with partners, associates and analysts dedicated to each sector and the support of scale and global reach. More than 50% of transactions involve foreign buyers, with direct access to more than 6,000 potential buyers in Brazil and abroad.
There are 35 partners, all owners of the firm, personally conducting each process from owner to owner. The partner who opens the transaction is the same one who closes it, because there is nowhere else to go. It is this model that Mergermarket measures in volume and that Leaders League recognizes in quality.
The entrepreneur can start this conversation even before deciding to sell. An early diagnosis helps to understand how much the company is worth today, what can be done to increase that value and when the right moment is to open a process.
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