Boutique investment banks generally work on smaller deals involving middle-market companies, and usually assist on the sell or buy-side in mergers and acquisitions transactions.
The discrediting of traditionally conflicted Wall Street investment banking firms, especially those listed as full-service or conglomerates on the list of investment banks, due to their role in the creation or exacerbation of the 2007–2008 financial crisis, is cited as a primary reason for the ascendancy of these boutique firms.
However, advances in technology which permit the outsourcing of all non-core aspects of the firm have also been cited as a cause of this David versus Goliath phenomenon.
[5][6] As larger investment banks were hit hard by the Great Recession of the 2000s, many senior bankers left to join boutiques, some of which largely resemble the partnerships that ruled Wall Street in the 1970s and 1980s.
[8] While these may be full-service and international in scale, they are significantly smaller than and do not offer the breadth of products and services of bulge bracket investment banks.