A Transnational Financial Elite? Evidence from the Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) Professionals

A common representation of financiers as a transnational elite is widely spread. Following the transnational elite literature, financial elites involved in globalized financial markets can be depicted by their transnational mobility, their participation to transnational corporate elite networks and their participation to a borderless global economy. This communication aims to tackle this hypothesis by questioning the transnationality of a specific financial elite, those dealing with M&A. M&A deals are most of the times transnational, operated by transnational firms, matching buyers, sellers, investors and debt issuers from different countries. M&A service firms have developed a transnational professional jurisdiction (Boussard, 2018). However, to what extent are the careers of the M&A professionals transnational?

The issue raised is the kind of circulations, moves and mobilities on which rests the transnationality of the professionals involved in such deals. The mapping of “geographies of transnational professional practices” (Harrington and Seabrooke, 2020:411) is a question that remains to be addressed. The spaces created by cross-border practitioners do not necessarily rely on extensive physical mobility (Araujo and Davoine, 2023). The communication examines this question of transnational mobility with an inquiry into the M&A professional services in France, through an analysis of a data basis of 664 M&A operations in France in 2010, involving 842 individuals for whom detailed CV have been found on LinkedIn (2022). A sequence analysis shows that a very few of them (6%) have transnational careers, while 4 other clusters are constituted of professionals locally anchored. The communication questions this paradox of a transnational profession constituted by locally anchored professionals and presents evidence that this globalized financial market is locally embedded in national elites rather than organized by transnational elites. However, these national elites do possess a cosmopolitan capital (Buhlman et al., 2013), although this capital is not necessarily derived from long-lasting transnational careers.