Best M&A Advisors in Toronto (2026): the Bay Street and Mid-Market Bench

Best M&A Advisors in Toronto (2026): the Bay Street and Mid-Market Bench

Quick answer: Toronto has two benches. The Bay Street bank-owned dealers run the largest mandates, and in this year's dated ledger they appear mostly as buyers and lenders. The sub-C$300 million work is done by six independents with dated 2025-26 tombstones on their own sites. Origin Merchant Partners (Bay Street; its affiliate Origin Merchant Securities Inc. is an exempt market dealer, NRD 40580) has the deepest mid-market ledger, roughly twenty dated rows including Thomas Precision Machining to Radial Equity Partners (closed March 2026) and Burgundy Asset Management to BMO (announced June 19, 2025; tombstone dated October 2025). INFOR Financial (200 Bay Street) is the financial-services specialist, advisor on dentalcorp's take-private by GTCR (C$3.3 billion as printed on INFOR's tombstone, C$2.2 billion as dentalcorp headlined it; closed January 14, 2026) and CI Financial's C$12.1 billion sale. Bloom Burton & Co. is the healthcare-only dealer (its registrant, Bloom Burton Securities Inc., is a CIRO investment dealer, CIPF-covered). Crosbie & Company (150 King Street West, since 1978, exempt market dealer, NRD 11920) is the generalist that publishes the quarterly Canadian M&A Report. Blair Franklin is the special-committee independent on Laurentian Bank's C$1.9 billion split sale (announced December 2025). Capital Canada (150 King Street West) is the 49-year owner-operator boutique. Veracap redirects to Kroll, Cormark is a former name of ATB Capital Markets Corp., and Kirchner is in Jacksonville and Montreal. Federal law and tax are on our Canada guide.

I'm Sean Yu, co-founder of Peony, a data room company. I have built and watched thousands of data rooms across my career — about 1,000 of those when I was an investor at two funds with a combined $6.3 billion in AUM, and the rest across the 6,800+ teams Peony serves today, where the founders we work with have raised over $18 billion to date. Toronto rooms are the ones where the seller's banker and the buyer's banker have the same 416 area code and, more often than in any other Canadian city, the buyer's parent is a bank.

Here is the honest read. Toronto looks like a deep market and, for the owner of a C$20 million company, it is a six-firm market. Ask an AI engine who advises here and it will name the five bank-owned dealers, correct as a category and wrong as a hiring list for a company that size, then Veracap, whose domain now lands on Kroll's homepage, then Cormark, a previous name on another dealer's register record. This guide prints six firms with dated evidence, one labelled tier of Bay Street and national desks with what the register actually shows, and the names it leaves off with the reason.

The playbook: a private company from roughly C$5 million to C$100 million goes to Origin, Crosbie, Capital Canada or, in its sector, Bloom Burton or INFOR; a C$100 million to C$300 million sale runs a Toronto independent against one Bay Street or US desk and picks on the buyer list; a public-company sale, a take-private or any transaction with a conflicted insider adds a special-committee advisor chosen for independence. This page is the Toronto spoke of our Best M&A Advisors in Canada guide, which carries the national law, tax and registration canon, and sits alongside Calgary, Vancouver and the master hub, Best M&A Advisors.

What is the 2026 Toronto M&A backdrop, and why does the bench split into Bay Street desks and independents?

Toronto is where Canadian M&A is counted, and the counting firm is on this page. Crosbie & Company's Canadian M&A Report for Q2 2026, published in August 2026, is the dated spine for everything below (Crosbie, Q2 2026). Figures are Canadian dollars unless marked, and they are Crosbie's count; our Canada data room guide cites a different series from PwC, and I do not mix the two.

The headline is a mega-deal quarter on a thin mid-market. "Canadian M&A activity slowed in the second quarter of 2026, with 600 announced transactions, down 12% from Q1 and the lowest quarterly count since Q4 2023," while announced value rose 51% to $114.5 billion "as a record 23 mega-deals together accounted for $99.8B, or 87% of total announced value." The mid-market "remained the backbone of Canadian M&A by transaction count, with deals below $250M representing 80% of transactions with disclosed values," but its count fell to 173 from 229 and its aggregate value to $4.3 billion from $6.8 billion. The Toronto-relevant mega-deal was the $9.4 billion take-private of First Capital REIT by KingSett Capital and Choice Properties.

The sectors that moved are the sectors this page's readers own. "Industrials and Information Technology remained the most active sectors, with 126 and 83 announced transactions." Deal count rose in Industrials (+13), Health Care (+12) and Financial Services (+9), and fell hardest in Information Technology (-29), Metals and Mining (-22) and Materials (-20); in Q2 "no Q2 technology M&A deals cleared the $1B mark." Ontario hosted the most targets at 144. There is no published Toronto-only count, and I will not invent one.

The buyer is American about half the time. "Cross-border M&A represented 294 transactions, or 49% of deal count and 54% of aggregate value," foreign buyers acquired 138 Canadian targets, and "Canada-U.S. transactions remained the largest cross-border corridor, accounting for 57% of cross-border count and 45% of value." The Toronto ledger below reads the same way: Radial Equity Partners of New York, GTCR of Chicago, Moran Family of Brands, WestView Capital Partners of Boston, The Toro Company and Taiwan's PharmaEssentia are all buyers in it. Origin Merchant Partners says on its own about page that "over the past 5 years, more than 30% of Origin-led transactions have involved foreign counterparties."

The banks show up as buyers and lenders. I call this the Buyer, Not Banker pattern, and it is the structural fact about Toronto that a generic list misses. In the dated 2025-26 rows on this page, BMO Financial Group is the buyer of Burgundy Asset Management (Origin advised the seller), National Bank is the buyer of Laurentian Bank's retail and SME portfolios (Blair Franklin advises the special committee), and RBC and Export Development Canada led the C$90 million facility for ITPS Canada (Origin advised the borrower). I verified no bank-owned dealer as advisor of record on any specific Toronto deal in this pass, a statement about my evidence, not about their advisory desks. It is also why the special-committee lane exists: when the buyer, the lender and the largest bank desks are related, the board hires an independent.

Which M&A advisors actually run Toronto mandates in 2026?

Six names with dated evidence from their own sites, ranked, then a labelled tier of Bay Street and national desks. That is a thin bench for the largest financial centre in the country, and I would rather print six firms with their tombstones than eighteen with their marketing.

1. Origin Merchant Partners

• Ownership and offices: independent, founded 2011; "2012 Prime Financial District location secured ... located on Bay St. in the center of the Financial District," so I print Bay Street and no street number (about page). A Montreal office opened in 2022 and a US footprint came the same year by combining with Chicago-based InterOcean Advisors; "2025: the addition of CCC Investment Banking. This brings our team up to 28 Managing directors and expands our North American footprint to include boots-on-the ground coverage in Vancouver." In July 2026 it combined with Boston and New York consumer bank Consensus, per its release headline; I quote no terms. "Over the past 5 years, more than 30% of Origin-led transactions have involved foreign counterparties."
• Registration, per the register: Origin Merchant Securities Inc., the Canadian affiliate, is an exempt market dealer in Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec (NRD 40580; head office 199 Bay Street, Commerce Court West) per the CSA National Registration Search, checked September 19, 2026, and is not a CIRO dealer. The site's own line on what that status is for: "this means that we can agent private placements of debt and equity securities." I do not name its US broker-dealer because two pages on the site name different ones.
• Sector heads named on the timeline: Andrew Muirhead (Agriculture and Food), Mario DiPietro (TMT), Glenn Shyba (Real Estate), Rob Penteliuk (Financial Services), Jim Meloche (Resources), Cathy Steiner (Healthcare).
• Deal evidence (transactions, month as printed): thirteen dated 2025-26 rows sit in the ledger below. The shape is closed private sales of Southern Ontario operating companies to US sponsors and strategics (Thomas Precision Machining to Radial Equity Partners, March 2026; Kitchen Partners to Roskam Foods, May 2026; ET Group to Ricoh Canada; CSN Collision with ONCAP), a court-supervised CCAA sales-agent mandate (Iovate Health Sciences, approved by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice on April 16, 2026), a financial-services sale (Burgundy Asset Management to BMO Financial Group, with KMS Capital, announced June 19, 2025 and printed on the October 2025 tombstone at up to C$1,000 million), Beal University Canada's acquisition by Yorkville University (completed September 2026), and three special-committee mandates: Rupert Resources on its roughly C$2.9 billion arrangement with Agnico Eagle, with an MI 61-101 formal valuation and fairness opinion (closed June 16, 2026); the independent directors of Arizona Sonoran Copper on its acquisition by Hudbay (announced March 2026); and Tornado Infrastructure Equipment on its sale to The Toro Company (closed December 8, 2025). Cross-border: Illinois-based DRC Heat Transfer on its announced sale to Smiths Group plc (March 2026).
• Verdict: the deepest dated 2025-26 mid-market ledger of any Toronto independent, with sector heads and a special-committee practice. The first call for a Southern Ontario private company from roughly C$10 million to C$300 million whose buyer may be a US sponsor or strategic.

2. INFOR Financial

• Office: Royal Bank Plaza, South Tower, 200 Bay Street, Suite 2350, Toronto (inforfg.com). The operating entity named in a July 2025 TMX market-open notice is INFOR Financial Inc. Services: M&A advisory, capital raising, debt advisory and restructuring, merchant banking. Independent.
• Registration, per the register: INFOR Financial Inc. is a CIRO investment dealer (CIPF-covered), NRD 36970, registered as an investment dealer in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec, head office 200 Bay Street, Suite 2350, checked September 19, 2026 on CIRO's dealer list and the CSA National Registration Search.
• Sector pattern from the ledger: financial services and wealth management first, then healthcare services, mining and royalties, automotive aftermarket, industrial services and software.
• Deal evidence (transactions, role and value as printed, status from the linked release title): nine dated 2025-26 rows sit in the ledger below, from dentalcorp's take-private with GTCR (closed January 14, 2026) and CI Financial's C$12.1 billion sale to Mubadala Capital (tombstone dated August 2025; offer announced November 2024) at the top, to American Creek's C$64 million sale to Tudor Gold (closed September 2025) and LifeSpeak's C$107 million go-private (June 2025) in the band this page serves, with the Wellington-Altus C$400 million fairness opinion, Sailfish Royalty, Mister Transmission, Strike Group and WealthONE Bank of Canada between them. The page prints "Advisor" without saying company or special committee on dentalcorp and CI Financial, so I write "advisor on."
• Verdict: the Bay Street independent for a wealth manager, a bank, an insurance or fintech business, or a healthcare-services platform, with in-lane rows from C$64 million to C$107 million and a large-cap ledger the bank desks would be pleased to print. Second by depth of dated evidence, first for its sector.

3. Bloom Burton & Co.

• What it is: Toronto's healthcare-only investment bank, covering fairness opinions, equity and debt raising, M&A and strategic advisory across medical devices and diagnostics, digital health, healthcare services and therapeutics (bloomburton.com). It runs the annual Bloom Burton Healthcare Investor Conference (the 2026 edition opened the TSX in April) and publishes equity research; the tombstone wall runs back to 2009. I print no street address because the page I read carries none.
• Registration, per the register: the footer reads "MEMBER CIRO | MEMBER CIPF," and the register agrees. The registrant is Bloom Burton Securities Inc. (formerly Bloom Burton & Co. Limited), a CIRO investment dealer (CIPF-covered), NRD 49560, registered in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and Saskatchewan with its head office at 181 Bay Street, checked September 19, 2026; the advisory parent, Bloom Burton & Co., is not itself the registrant.
• Deal evidence (month as printed, counterparty from the release each tombstone links to): five dated 2026 rows in the ledger below: Nualtis Corp. acquired by COSCIENS Biopharma (September 2026); Andone Pharmaceuticals acquired by Sterimax (June 2026); FORUS Therapeutics acquired by PharmaEssentia of Taiwan for US$36.5 million (June 2026); PharmaSystems Inc. of Markham, founded 1977 by a pharmacist, acquired by Richards Group for C$13.5 million (May 2026); and a fairness opinion for Crescita Therapeutics (March 2026). The tombstones do not state which side Bloom Burton advised, so I do not either, and the wall lists the C$1.495 billion Apotex Health Corp. initial public offering (June 2026) without stating a syndicate role, so I state none.
• Verdict: the only sector-pure firm on the bench, and the first call for a Toronto-Markham-Oakville healthcare-services, pharma-services or device company in the C$10 million to C$100 million band. Third because its dated 2026 M&A rows are four and its sides are unstated, not because the evidence is weak.

4. Crosbie & Company

• Office and ownership: 150 King Street West, Suite 1506, Toronto; "Founded in 1978"; "an entrepreneurial employee-owned firm"; "Selling companies is a core part of Crosbie's advisory services and accounts for the largest portion of our business" (crosbieco.com). Sector filters run from business services and construction through consumer, financial services, Indigenous and First Nations, industrial and real estate to technology, media and telecom. Managing Director Sadat Mirza is quoted in the Q2 2026 report.
• Registration, as stated on its site: "Crosbie & Company Inc. is an Exempt Market Dealer (EMD) registered with the securities commissions and regulatory bodies of Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan and Yukon." The CSA National Registration Search, checked September 19, 2026, confirms it: Crosbie & Company Inc., NRD 11920, exempt market dealer in exactly those ten jurisdictions, head office 150 King Street West; it is not a CIRO dealer.
• Deal evidence: the experience page shows 150 transactions as logo pairs with no dates, and the site was relaunched in mid-2026, so I date nothing from it. Two rows are dated elsewhere on its own site: "In late 2024, Visual Elements Manufacturing, a major Canadian store fixture business, was sold to SigmaQ ... Crosbie advised the owners of Visual Elements on that transaction," from its June 2025 store-fixture report; and the July 24, 2025 news item on CaTECH Systems of Markham receiving a growth investment from Boston's WestView Capital Partners, whose release I did not open, so I print no side. Undated case studies: Blended Perspectives sold to Contegix, a US portfolio company of Strattam Capital; Silver Crystal Group acquired by Avery Dennison; First Nations Bank of Canada's equity raise.
• Verdict: the generalist mid-market house with the broadest sector list and the report the rest of the market quotes. Fourth because its own site dates almost none of its 150 tombstones; ask for the last three closes with dates and you will have the missing column.

5. Blair Franklin Capital Partners

• What it is: "a leading independent Canadian investment bank," per its homepage; "300+ Advisory Assignments," "$300B+ Transaction Value," "2003 Year Founded," "100% Employee Owned"; "Advising clients is our sole business" (blairfranklin.com). Its own positioning: "the leading independent Canadian financial advisor to Boards of Directors and Special Committees ... particular expertise in long-form fairness opinions, formal MI 61-101 valuations, and multi-class share structures." The pages I read print no street address; the register gives Bay Adelaide Centre, 22 Adelaide Street West, Suite 2430. Its site prints no registration line, but the CSA National Registration Search, checked September 19, 2026, shows Blair Franklin Capital Partners Inc. (NRD 41310) as an exempt market dealer in Ontario only, not a CIRO dealer.
• Deal evidence: its tombstones are undated on the site, so I date two by public record and no others. Advisor to the special committee of Laurentian Bank on its sale to Fairstone Bank and the sale of its retail and SME portfolios to National Bank, C$1.9 billion: announced December 2, 2025, shareholder-approved February 2026, Minister of Finance approval June 2026, final regulatory approvals August 31, 2026, expected to close November 1, 2026, so announced, not closed. Advisor to the special committee of Logistec on its sale to Blue Wolf and Stonepeak, closed January 2024. Undated rows I name without values: the special committees of Sleep Country, WPT Industrial REIT, Atlantic Power and Home Capital Group; Shopify's special committee; Gluskin Sheff's sale to Onex.
• Verdict: out of the C$5 million to C$300 million lane by design and on the page for a reason: when a Toronto board needs a formal valuation or a fairness opinion that a court, a regulator and a dissenting shareholder will read, this is the independent that specializes in it. Fifth because it is a different product, not a lesser one.

6. Capital Canada Limited

• Office and tenure: 150 King Street West, Suite 2108, Toronto, in the same building as Crosbie (capitalcanada.com). "An independent investment banking firm providing expert, financial advice to corporations and entrepreneurs in Canada and abroad ... For over 49 years"; tagline "Canada's preeminent mid-market investment bank focused on the entrepreneur." Services include business sales and divestitures, valuations and fairness opinions, growth financing and special situations. The site prints no registration line, but the CSA National Registration Search, checked September 19, 2026, shows Capital Canada Limited (NRD 580) as an exempt market dealer in Alberta, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Ontario and Quebec; it is not a CIRO dealer.
• Deal evidence: the firm's own feed dates its transaction posts by client only: SkyNorth Air (January 2025), Peninsula Capital (August 2024), Steelhorse Freight Services (June 2024), Essential Turbines (May 2024), LJW Tank Lines (March 2024), Bridgehead Coffee (January 2024), BarBurrito (October 2023). The posts do not name the counterparty or Capital Canada's role, so I print neither. It announced in March 2025 that it was "recognized for closing the top Transportation deal of 2024"; the ranker is not named, so I attribute none. Golf Town, the Toronto Raptors and SkyDome appear under "Noteworthy Transactions" and are historic.
• Verdict: the owner-operator boutique for a transport, aviation, restaurant or similar business at the C$5 million to C$50 million end, with 49 years behind it and a thin public 2025-26 ledger. Sixth because the most recent dated transaction post is January 2025; if it has closed since, ask it to show you.

Which Bay Street and national desks are present in Toronto without a dated tombstone I could open?

Presence is not evidence, so these get a tier and register facts, not a rank, from the September 16 and 19, 2026 registrar passes for this series (CIRO's dealer list and the CSA National Registration Search). Stifel Nicolaus Canada Inc. is a CIRO investment dealer with its head office at 161 Bay Street, Suite 3800. ATB Capital Markets Corp., brand ATB Cormark Capital Markets, is a CIRO investment dealer under NRD 10090 in all thirteen jurisdictions with its register head office at 200 Bay Street, Suite 1800, Royal Bank Plaza, and the same record lists Cormark Securities Inc. and Sprott Securities Inc. as previous names; a CIRO search for "Cormark" returns nothing. Its own transaction history carries two Toronto-relevant dated rows, Northern Superior Resources' C$375 million sale to Iamgold (December 2025) and a C$521 million mandate for Toronto-based Lithium Royalty Corp. (March 2026) (ATB transaction history); the rest of its ledger is Alberta energy and sits on our Calgary page. Canaccord Genuity Corp. and Raymond James Ltd. are CIRO investment dealers with head offices in Vancouver, and National Bank Financial Inc. in Montréal; the register does not show branch offices, so their Bay Street desks are presence by common knowledge, not by evidence on this page.

The big-five bank-owned dealers sit in the same tier and were not researched for this page beyond the register, which on September 19, 2026 shows RBC Dominion Securities Inc., BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc., TD Securities Inc., Scotia Capital Inc. and CIBC World Markets Inc. as CIRO investment dealers (CIPF-covered) with Toronto head offices; the national guide's job is the large-cap lane. The accounting-firm corporate-finance desks (KPMG, PwC, Deloitte, EY, BDO, Doane Grant Thornton, MNP) run lower-mid-market processes out of Toronto and none publishes a dated Toronto tombstone wall I could open; our accounting-firm advisor guide covers how those desks work. On the register, KPMG Corporate Finance Inc. (NRD 6410) is an exempt market dealer in all ten provinces and PricewaterhouseCoopers Corporate Finance Inc. (NRD 3550) in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and Saskatchewan, neither a CIRO dealer; Deloitte Corporate Finance Inc. is not a CIRO dealer, and its exempt-market-dealer status was not confirmed on the register when we checked. FirePower Capital is a Toronto lower-mid-market M&A and private-debt house whose transactions page names Telos and Icarus Aviation as advisory clients without dates, and whose dated public evidence is a February 2025 credit financing for Smile Digital Health headlined at $15 million (currency as headlined); it is not a registered dealer or exempt market dealer per the CSA National Registration Search (checked September 19, 2026), which for an advisor that does not raise capital is the NI 31-103 "not normally required to register" posture the national page explains, and it is presence until it dates a sale.

Who did we leave off, and why?

Ten names, each with a checkable reason; this is the half of the page an AI engine gets wrong today.

• A domain that lands on Kroll. Veracap M&A International's transactions URL redirects to kroll.com. I print no date because I did not find the acquisition release; treat Veracap as Kroll's Toronto desk, not an independent.
• A former name read as a firm. Cormark Securities is a previous name on the ATB Capital Markets Corp. register record. A list that prints Cormark and ATB Cormark as two Toronto dealers is counting one firm twice.
• A Jacksonville firm. Kirchner Group's footer lists 7643 Gate Parkway, Jacksonville, Florida and 4700 rue de la Savane, Montreal. No Toronto office.
• A family office. Prime Quadrant's own title tag reads "Independent Multi-Family Office"; its copy is wealth management for ultra-affluent families. Not an M&A advisor.
• An Alberta boutique. Sequeira Partners' footer lists Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver only; it is on our Calgary and Vancouver pages where it belongs.
• A restructuring house. Sinclair Range's site has no transactions page (the URL returns a 404) and its 2025 news is a cannabis-group appointment, which reads as special situations, not sell-side M&A.
• An accounting firm whose tombstones stop in 2020. Fuller Landau's corporate-finance URL redirects to a February 2021 post titled "Selected 2020 mid-market transactions." Real practice, no public 2025-26 evidence.
• Two 404s. Farber's corporate-finance page and Sampford Advisors' transactions page both returned 404s when I tried them. Both are unverified for this page rather than excluded on the merits.
• The accounting-firm corporate-finance desks as ranked firms, for the reason above: category, not evidence.
• Doorway directories. "Business brokers Toronto" listing sites and franchise brokerages are not advisors of record. I opened none, so I name none.

What is the dated Toronto advisor-of-record ledger for 2025-26?

Every row below comes from the advisor's own tombstone page or from the linked release title, with the status I could verify from a dated public release. "Announced" means I did not confirm a close. Values are as printed by the advisor, with the counterparty's own headline figure where it differs; C$ unless marked.

Three reads from the ledger. The independents' in-lane rows cluster from C$13.5 million to C$107 million, which is the band this page serves. The special-committee rows are the largest numbers on the page and belong to independents, not banks. And the buyer column is American or foreign in roughly half the rows, which matches Crosbie's 49% cross-border count for the country.

Which Toronto engines produced the 2025-26 deals?

Four engines, and the ledger rows above sort into them. Read them for the buyer set you should expect.

• Financial services and wealth management, Bay Street selling to Bay Street. This is the engine no other Canadian city has: Burgundy to BMO (Origin with KMS Capital), CI Financial to Mubadala, Wellington-Altus's Kelso investment and WealthONE Bank's sale to a Globalive-led consortium (INFOR), and Laurentian Bank's split sale on eleven months of bank-approval clocks (Blair Franklin). Below the headlines, Collectivfide's C$65 million growth round led by Farm Mutual Re (Origin, September 2025) is the insurance-brokerage roll-up shape. For the US desks that price a Canadian wealth or insurance platform for an American buyer, see our financial services, insurance and fintech and payments advisor guides.
• Healthcare services and life sciences, Markham to Oakville. dentalcorp's take-private by Chicago's GTCR, closed January 14, 2026 with INFOR as advisor, is the ceiling case and the reason every Ontario dental and pharmacy platform now has a sponsor's number. Bloom Burton's four 2026 M&A rows are the in-band evidence, and Origin's Iovate mandate is the distressed shape: a court-supervised CCAA sale of the Oakville maker of MuscleTech and Hydroxycut, approved April 16, 2026, with KSV Restructuring as monitor. The sponsor buyers are on our dental and healthcare advisor guides; the room design for a regulated life-sciences sale is on our healthcare and life sciences data room guide.
• Southern Ontario manufacturing, food and industrial services. Crosbie counted Industrials as Canada's most active sector in Q2 2026 with 126 announced deals, and Origin's Thomas Precision Machining, Kitchen Partners, CSN Collision and Tornado rows, INFOR's Mister Transmission and Strike Group, and Crosbie's Visual Elements Manufacturing are the Toronto-advisor version of that count. Origin's DRC Heat Transfer mandate shows the reverse corridor, a Toronto advisor selling an Illinois manufacturer to Smiths Group plc, which our UK advisers guide reads from the other end. For the US sponsor add-on pipeline that prices a C$30 million Ontario machine shop, see our industrial and automotive advisor guides.
• Software, IT services and the US-buyer corridor. Q2 2026 was a down quarter for Canadian technology M&A by count (83 deals, down 29) and by size (nothing over $1 billion after Q1's Ecolab-CoolIT and Equinix-atNorth mega-deals), which is exactly when a Toronto software owner should read tombstones rather than headlines: ET Group to Ricoh Canada (Origin, announced February 2026), Blended Perspectives to Contegix (Crosbie, undated) and LifeSpeak's go-private (INFOR) are the rows. A sub-threshold software sale does not wait on the Investment Canada Act; the thresholds are on our Canada data room guide, and the buyers sit on our IT services and MSP advisor guide, SaaS sale guide and Chicago, Boston and New York pages.

Should a Toronto owner hire a Bay Street bank or an independent boutique?

Decide on enterprise value, buyer universe and conflicts, not on the brand your lawyer's brother works for. Above roughly C$300 million, or on a public-company arrangement with a global strategic buyer, the bank-owned dealers' reach, research and balance sheets earn the fee, and their names on the cover of a circular are read by institutional shareholders. Below that, the six independents staff the mandate with the people who pitched it, and the 2025-26 ledger shows where the banks actually were: BMO buying Burgundy, National Bank buying Laurentian's portfolios, RBC and EDC lending to ITPS. Origin's about page states the independents' case in its own words: "Unlike many larger multi-product firms, we are truly objective, with no credit, underwriting, trading or research conflicts." Discount that as marketing if you like; then ask the bank pitching you whether its lending arm banks the likely buyer.

The special-committee exception runs the other way. When a TSX or TSXV board faces a related-party bid or a sale in which insiders are conflicted, it hires an independent for independence, not for size, which is why the largest numbers on this page, Laurentian's C$1.9 billion, Rupert's C$2.9 billion and Wellington-Altus's C$400 million fairness opinion, belong to Blair Franklin, Origin and INFOR. Interview one Toronto independent and one bank or US desk, ask each for its last three closed mandates with counterparties and dates, and pick on the buyer list. A Bay Street desk that says it will staff a C$30 million mandate usually means a junior team and a managing director on the pitch call; ask who is on the deal daily.

What do Toronto M&A advisors charge?

No Toronto firm publishes a fee schedule, so the honest answer is a dated North American survey plus arithmetic you can check, quoted in Canadian dollars on Canadian mandates. Axial's 2026 M&A Fee Guide (331 advisors surveyed in Q2 2026, published July 2026) puts sell-side success fees at roughly 2% to 10% of transaction value, reports that 71% of advisors charge some form of upfront fee, and finds Lehman-style declining formulas still the most common structure while flat percentages gain share; the Firmex/Axial survey composite runs about 4.8% at $5 million, 3.4% at $20 million and 2.0% at $100 million. The full mechanics, including the transaction-value definition that quietly adds assumed debt to the base, are in our M&A advisor fees guide.

The two scales are definitions, not survey data:

• Classic Lehman (5-4-3-2-1): 5% of the first million, 4% of the second, 3% of the third, 2% of the fourth, 1% above four million. On a C$20 million sale, C$300,000 (1.5%).
• Double Lehman (10-8-6-4-2): the same tiers doubled. On C$20 million, C$600,000 (3.0%), and the lower-middle-market workhorse.

That is a North American survey, not a Toronto one, and no Canadian fee survey I could open exists. Two Toronto-specific points. Advisory fees attract GST/HST at the province's rate on top of the quoted percentage, so a C$600,000 fee is not the cash number; I print no rate here because I did not read the CRA page for this article. And special-committee and fairness-opinion mandates are usually fixed fees rather than success fees, because an opinion paid as a percentage of the price is an opinion a dissenting shareholder's counsel will enjoy cross-examining. Get four things in writing: the success-fee schedule and any minimum, whether the retainer is credited at close, the tail, and an exclusivity term tied to milestones.

Is the retainer credited against the success fee?

Usually, and the letter should say so in one sentence. In Axial's survey 71% of advisors charge an upfront fee; the question that matters is whether it nets against the success fee at closing, which turns it into a prepayment rather than an extra cost. On a fairness-opinion mandate ask the reverse question: whether any part of the fixed fee is contingent on the transaction closing, because the answer should be no.

How do Ontario tax, Toronto's land transfer tax and the federal gates change a Toronto sale?

Most of what decides what you keep is federal and lives on the national page. Here is the Toronto part in full and the federal part in one paragraph with a link.

The Toronto part: share sale versus asset sale, and the Municipal Land Transfer Tax

Toronto is the only Canadian city that layers its own land transfer tax on top of a provincial one. The City's Municipal Land Transfer Tax page confirms the tax exists and records that "on December 17, 2025 City Council passed an amendment to introduce graduated Municipal Land Transfer Tax rates for high-value residential properties," effective April 1, 2026 (toronto.ca, MLTT). The point for a seller is structural: an asset sale that conveys Toronto real property attracts the MLTT on top of the Ontario land transfer tax, while a share sale transfers the company and leaves title where it is. That is one reason a Toronto owner-operator who owns the premises leans to a share sale, alongside the Lifetime Capital Gains Exemption (share sale only) and the GST/HST going-concern election (asset sale only), both on the national page. I print no Ontario rate here because the province's rate page was not readable when I wrote this; confirm every figure with an Ontario tax advisor.

Two Toronto process points belong with the tax. A public-company sale runs through a court-approved plan of arrangement, as Rupert Resources' arrangement with Agnico Eagle did; I cite no section number because I did not read the statute for this page. And a distressed sale runs through the Ontario Superior Court of Justice (Commercial List) under the CCAA, as Iovate's did on April 16, 2026, with a court-appointed monitor beside the sales agent.

The federal part, in one paragraph

The Lifetime Capital Gains Exemption on qualified small business corporation shares, what Budget 2025 did to the capital gains inclusion rate and the Canadian Entrepreneurs' Incentive, the section 85 rollover, the GST/HST section 167 election on a going-concern asset sale, whether your advisor must be registered as an exempt market dealer under National Instrument 31-103, and the Investment Canada Act and Competition Act gates are all on our Best M&A Advisors in Canada guide, and I do not restate them here. The two numbers a Toronto owner needs at the first meeting, as our Canada data room guide states them: no Competition Act notification below a C$93 million transaction size and C$400 million size of parties, and 2026 Investment Canada Act net-benefit review thresholds of C$1.452 billion for WTO investors and C$2.179 billion for trade-agreement investors. Toronto supplied the regulated-industry example this year: Laurentian Bank's split sale needed the Minister of Finance's approval in June 2026 and final regulatory approvals on August 31, 2026 before an expected November 1 close.

How do I verify a Toronto M&A advisor before I sign?

Two registers and one footer, and it takes an afternoon. Search the firm on CIRO's Dealers We Regulate list and on the CSA's National Registration Search (search a single word; the firm search fails silently on an ampersand), then read the firm's own footer for the registration line.

Toronto has three registration postures, and the register, checked September 19, 2026, sorts the firms on this page into them. The CIRO investment dealer (CIPF-covered): Bloom Burton Securities Inc. (NRD 49560, the registrant behind the Bloom Burton & Co. brand) and INFOR Financial Inc. (NRD 36970), the full-service shape; among the Bay Street desks, Stifel Nicolaus Canada Inc., ATB Capital Markets Corp. (NRD 10090) and the five bank-owned dealers. The exempt-market-dealer firm or affiliate: Origin Merchant Securities Inc. (NRD 40580; Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec), Crosbie & Company Inc. (NRD 11920; ten jurisdictions), Blair Franklin Capital Partners Inc. (NRD 41310; Ontario only) and Capital Canada Limited (NRD 580; Alberta, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Ontario and Quebec), which is what lets an M&A boutique also agent a private placement; none of the four is a CIRO dealer, and Blair Franklin and Capital Canada hold the registration without printing a line about it on their sites. The advisory-only firm with no registration: FirePower Capital, not a registered dealer or exempt market dealer per the CSA National Registration Search, current or historical. Whether a pure sell-side advisor needs registration at all is the NI 31-103 question on the national page; an M&A advisor that does not raise capital is, in the companion policy's words, not normally required to register. Registrations change, so repeat the two searches before you sign.

The Toronto trap is the same as Calgary's, and I call the check the Former-Name Test: the brand you were pitched and the name on the register may differ. "ATB Cormark Capital Markets" is a brand; the registrant is ATB Capital Markets Corp., NRD 10090, and its previous names are Cormark Securities Inc. and Sprott Securities Inc. "Veracap" is a domain that now resolves to Kroll. "Origin Merchant Partners" is the advisory firm and "Origin Merchant Securities Inc." is the dealer affiliate. "Bloom Burton & Co." is the brand; the CIRO registrant is Bloom Burton Securities Inc.

Then ask the evidence question this page asks of every firm: the last three closed mandates with the counterparty named and the date, and who staffs the process daily. Origin prints month and year on every tombstone; INFOR prints role, value and a linked release; Bloom Burton prints month and value but not the side; Crosbie prints 150 logo pairs and almost no dates; Blair Franklin prints values and no dates; Capital Canada prints client names and dates but no counterparties.

Which data room should a Toronto seller use?

You need one before the teaser, and in Toronto the room is where the conflicts problem gets managed: the likely buyer is a competitor down King Street, the buyer's parent may be your lender, and the sponsor bidding low to read your customer contracts already owns a competitor in Mississauga. A data room is a permissioned online workspace where buyers review the CIM, contracts and financials under a signed confidentiality agreement. The requirements: a separate room per bidder; staged disclosure so the customer contracts with their change-of-control clauses, pricing schedules and employee roster open only after a letter of intent; dynamic watermarks on every page; NDA gates on every folder; auto-indexing; and page-level analytics to see which bidder actually read the quality of earnings report before the bid date.

The honest landscape:

Bottom line: For a Toronto private-company sale under roughly C$100 million, Peony's Data Room plan at $52 per admin per month billed annually gives you per-viewer watermarks, signed NDA gates, custom domains, auto-indexing, unlimited bidder rooms and page-level analytics at a flat rate; Business is $30, Deal Team is $64 with redaction and archive download, and there is a permanent free tier with password links, expiry and analytics. Datasite and Intralinks are the right call above $200 million, on a public-company arrangement, or where the special committee's counsel names the platform.

We make Peony, so this is honest disclosure: for a TSX take-private, a special-committee process or a bank sale that needs the Minister of Finance's approval, most counsel will name Datasite or Intralinks, and Firmex, which is Toronto-headquartered and Datasite-owned since 2021 per our Canada data room guide, is the mid-market name your Bay Street lawyer already knows. Two Toronto-specific setups: in a wealth-management or insurance-brokerage sale the client list and the advisor compensation grid sit behind a post-LOI gate because the buyer's retention holdback and earn-out, like the ones in Burgundy's sale to BMO, are priced off them; and where a bank-owned buyer is bidding, the lender covenants and banking relationship file sit in their own folder so the buyer's credit team is not reading your other bank's terms for the price of an indicative bid. On hosting, the Canada data room guide states that PIPEDA does not require Canadian data residency for private-sector data and that Peony's standard plans process data in the United States with custom residency on Enterprise; I add no new claim here. Peony holds a 4.8 on G2 and a 4.9 on Capterra, and 6,800+ customers run rooms on it today.

Frequently asked questions about Toronto M&A advisors

Who are the best M&A advisors in Toronto?

Six Toronto firms carry dated 2025-26 evidence from their own sites. Origin Merchant Partners has the deepest independent mid-market ledger, with roughly twenty dated tombstones including Thomas Precision Machining's sale to Radial Equity Partners (closed March 2026) and Burgundy Asset Management's sale to BMO Financial Group (announced June 19, 2025; Origin's tombstone is dated October 2025). INFOR Financial, at 200 Bay Street, is the financial-services and wealth-management specialist, advisor on dentalcorp's take-private by GTCR (C$3.3 billion as printed on INFOR's tombstone; dentalcorp headlined it at C$2.2 billion; closed January 14, 2026) and CI Financial's C$12.1 billion sale to Mubadala Capital. Bloom Burton & Co. is the healthcare-only investment bank with four dated 2026 M&A rows. Crosbie & Company, at 150 King Street West since 1978, is the exempt-market-dealer generalist that publishes the quarterly Canadian M&A Report. Blair Franklin is the special-committee independent on Laurentian Bank's C$1.9 billion split sale, and Capital Canada is the 49-year owner-operator boutique. The bank-owned Bay Street desks appear in this year's ledger mostly as buyers and lenders, and Veracap, Cormark and Kirchner do not belong on a Toronto list. I run Peony, the data room 6,800+ teams use; demand dated mandates, not list order.

Which Toronto M&A boutiques handle deals under C$50 million?

Four of the six, and only a few tombstones print a value that low. Bloom Burton's PharmaSystems sale to Richards Group at C$13.5 million (May 2026) is the clearest dated sub-C$50 million row, with FORUS Therapeutics to PharmaEssentia at US$36.5 million beside it. Origin Merchant Partners' 2025-26 tombstones are mostly private lower-mid-market sales with undisclosed values: Thomas Precision Machining to Radial Equity Partners, Kitchen Partners to Roskam Foods, ET Group to Ricoh Canada and The Clover School to Globeducate. Capital Canada is built for the owner-operator end from roughly C$5 million, with transport, aviation and restaurant clients, and Crosbie & Company's 150-transaction wall is the generalist mid-market book. INFOR Financial's in-lane rows start higher, at American Creek's C$64 million and LifeSpeak's C$107 million, so it is a sector call rather than a size call. Blair Franklin is the exception: a special-committee and fairness-opinion house whose typical mandate is measured in billions, so it is out of this lane.

Should an Ontario owner hire a Bay Street bank or a boutique?

Decide on enterprise value, buyer universe and conflicts. Above roughly C$300 million, or for a public-company arrangement where the buyer is a global strategic, the bank-owned dealers' reach and balance sheets earn the fee. Below that, the independents on this page staff the mandate with the people who pitched it, and the 2025-26 ledger shows the pattern: BMO Financial Group was the buyer of Burgundy Asset Management while Origin Merchant Partners and KMS Capital advised the seller, National Bank is the buyer of Laurentian Bank's retail and SME portfolios while Blair Franklin advises the special committee, and RBC and Export Development Canada led ITPS Canada's C$90 million facility while Origin advised the borrower. The one place an independent is hired for independence rather than size is a special committee, which is why Blair Franklin, Origin and INFOR all print special-committee and fairness rows. Interview one of each and pick on the buyer list with last-contact dates.

Do Toronto advisors sell to US buyers?

Yes, about half the time, and the ledger on this page reads that way. Crosbie & Company's Canadian M&A Report for Q2 2026 counted cross-border deals at 49% of Canadian transaction count and 54% of value, with the Canada-US corridor at 57% of cross-border count, and Origin Merchant Partners states that more than 30% of Origin-led transactions over the past five years involved foreign counterparties. In the dated 2025-26 Toronto rows the buyers include Radial Equity Partners of New York (Thomas Precision Machining), GTCR of Chicago (dentalcorp), Moran Family of Brands (Mister Transmission), WestView Capital Partners of Boston (CaTECH Systems), The Toro Company (Tornado Infrastructure Equipment) and Kelso & Company (Wellington-Altus), and Origin's DRC Heat Transfer mandate ran the corridor in reverse, selling an Illinois manufacturer to the UK's Smiths Group plc. Ask a Toronto independent for its US buyer list with last-contact dates and compare it with a US sector boutique's; Origin's InterOcean and Consensus combinations are its answer to that question, and the other firms should have one. A sub-threshold sale to a US buyer does not wait on the Investment Canada Act; the thresholds are on our Canada data room guide.

Is Origin Merchant Partners the best M&A boutique in Toronto?

On dated, printed evidence it has the deepest 2025-26 mid-market ledger of any independent in the city, which is why it ranks first here. Its own timeline says it was founded in 2011, took a Bay Street office in 2012, closed a record 13 transactions in 2018 and a record 17 in 2023, added CCC Investment Banking in 2025 to reach 28 managing directors with Vancouver coverage, and in July 2026 combined with Boston and New York consumer bank Consensus. Its Canadian affiliate, Origin Merchant Securities Inc., is an exempt market dealer in Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec (NRD 40580) per the CSA National Registration Search, checked September 19, 2026, and is not a CIRO dealer. The honest ceiling: Origin's tombstones print a month, not a status, so I dated the closes myself where I could (Rupert Resources to Agnico Eagle closed June 16, 2026; Tornado to Toro closed December 8, 2025; Beal University to Yorkville completed September 2026), while Burgundy to BMO and DRC Heat Transfer to Smiths Group remain announced-not-verified on this page. Best is a lane question; for a Southern Ontario private company with a strategic or sponsor buyer it is the first call.

Who sells a wealth management or financial services firm in Toronto?

Two independents and one special-committee house print the 2025-26 rows. Origin Merchant Partners, with KMS Capital, was financial advisor to Burgundy Asset Management, about C$27 billion under management at May 31, 2025, on its sale to BMO Financial Group (announced June 19, 2025; Origin's tombstone is dated October 2025), a price Origin's tombstone prints as up to C$1,000 million and BMO's release states as approximately C$625 million in BMO shares, including a C$125 million holdback for 18 months after closing, plus an unquantified earn-out; and advised Collectivfide on a C$65 million growth investment led by Farm Mutual Re. INFOR Financial was advisor on CI Financial's C$12.1 billion sale to Mubadala Capital (tombstone dated August 2025), provided the fairness opinion on Wellington-Altus's C$400 million minority investment from Kelso & Company (closed January 2026), and advised WealthONE Bank of Canada on its sale to a Globalive-led consortium, approved by the Government of Canada in July 2025. Blair Franklin advises the special committee of Laurentian Bank on its C$1.9 billion sale to Fairstone Bank and National Bank, announced December 2, 2025 and expected to close November 1, 2026. Our financial services advisor guide carries the US desks for a cross-border buyer list.

Who advises on healthcare and life sciences M&A in Toronto?

Bloom Burton & Co. is the only healthcare-only investment bank on the page, and its 2026 M&A rows are the in-lane evidence: PharmaSystems of Markham to Richards Group for C$13.5 million (May 2026), FORUS Therapeutics to Taiwan's PharmaEssentia for US$36.5 million (June 2026), Andone Pharmaceuticals to Sterimax (June 2026) and Nualtis to COSCIENS Biopharma (September 2026), plus a fairness opinion for Crescita Therapeutics (March 2026); its tombstones do not state which side it advised, so neither do I. INFOR Financial was advisor on dentalcorp's take-private by GTCR, closed January 14, 2026, and on LifeSpeak's C$107 million go-private (June 2025). Origin Merchant Partners served as sales agent on the court-supervised CCAA sale of Oakville-based Iovate Health Sciences, approved by the Ontario Superior Court on April 16, 2026. For a US sponsor buyer, the dental and healthcare desks in our healthcare advisor guide are the cross-border complement.

Do Toronto M&A advisors need to be registered with CIRO or as an exempt market dealer?

Whether they need to is the National Instrument 31-103 question our Canada guide answers; what the register shows, checked September 19, 2026 on CIRO's dealer list and the CSA National Registration Search, is this. Two of the six independents are CIRO investment dealers (CIPF-covered): Bloom Burton Securities Inc. (NRD 49560; the registrant behind the Bloom Burton & Co. brand) and INFOR Financial Inc. (NRD 36970). The other four are exempt market dealers, not CIRO dealers: Origin Merchant Securities Inc. (NRD 40580; Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec), Crosbie & Company Inc. (NRD 11920; ten jurisdictions including Ontario), Blair Franklin Capital Partners Inc. (NRD 41310; Ontario only) and Capital Canada Limited (NRD 580; Alberta, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Ontario and Quebec). Of the Bay Street desks, Stifel Nicolaus Canada Inc. (161 Bay Street) and ATB Capital Markets Corp. (200 Bay Street, NRD 10090, previous names Cormark Securities Inc. and Sprott Securities Inc.) are CIRO investment dealers. Registrations change, so re-check each firm on both registers before you sign.

What does a special committee advisor do, and when does a Toronto deal need a fairness opinion?

When a public company's board faces a related-party deal, an insider bid or a sale in which management or a major shareholder is conflicted, the independent directors form a special committee and hire their own financial advisor to deliver a formal valuation or a fairness opinion the committee can rely on. Blair Franklin describes itself as the leading independent Canadian financial advisor to boards and special committees, with particular expertise in long-form fairness opinions, formal MI 61-101 valuations and multi-class share structures; its dated row is the special committee of Laurentian Bank on the C$1.9 billion sale to Fairstone Bank and National Bank, announced December 2, 2025. Origin Merchant Partners prepared the MI 61-101 formal valuation and fairness opinion for the special committee of Rupert Resources on its roughly C$2.9 billion arrangement with Agnico Eagle (announced April 2026, closed June 16, 2026), and INFOR Financial provided the fairness opinion on Wellington-Altus's C$400 million Kelso investment. This is the one lane where independence, not reach, is the hiring criterion.

Which firms on Toronto M&A advisor lists are not actually Toronto sell-side advisors?

Ten names, each with a checkable reason. Veracap M&A International's domain now redirects to Kroll's homepage. Cormark Securities is a previous name on ATB Capital Markets Corp.'s register record, not a separate dealer. Kirchner Group's footer lists Jacksonville, Florida and Montreal, with no Toronto office. Prime Quadrant describes itself as an independent multi-family office. Sequeira Partners' footer lists Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver only. Sinclair Range has no transactions page and reads as a restructuring house. Fuller Landau's corporate-finance page redirects to a 2020 tombstone set. Farber's corporate-finance page and Sampford Advisors' transactions page both returned 404s, so I could not verify either. The accounting-firm corporate-finance desks of KPMG, PwC, Deloitte, EY, BDO, Doane Grant Thornton and MNP run real lower-mid-market processes out of Toronto, but none publishes a dated Toronto tombstone wall I could open, so they are a category here, not ranked firms.

Is Toronto M&A activity up or down in 2026?

Both, depending on the measure, and there is no Toronto-only count. Crosbie & Company's Canadian M&A Report for Q2 2026, published August 2026, counted 600 announced Canadian transactions, down 12% from Q1 and the lowest quarterly count since Q4 2023, while announced value rose 51% to $114.5 billion because a record 23 mega-deals accounted for $99.8 billion, or 87% of the total. The mid-market softened: deals below $250 million were 80% of transactions with disclosed values, but their count fell to 173 from 229 and their aggregate value to $4.3 billion from $6.8 billion. Ontario hosted 144 targets, the most of any province. Industrials (126 deals) and Information Technology (83) were the most active sectors, cross-border deals were 49% of count and 54% of value, and the Canada-US corridor was 57% of cross-border count. The Toronto-relevant mega-deal was KingSett Capital and Choice Properties' $9.4 billion take-private of First Capital REIT. Crosbie's Sadat Mirza put it plainly: fewer deals in the market are attracting more attention and stronger competition from buyers for high-quality businesses.

How long does it take to sell a Toronto company, and will a US buyer slow it down?

In my experience, plan on six to nine months from signed engagement to close after three to twelve months of preparation, and add a regulator's clock only if the buyer or the sector triggers one. Most Toronto mid-market sales do not: a US sponsor buying a C$40 million Ontario manufacturer sits far below the Investment Canada Act net-benefit review thresholds and the Competition Act notification thresholds our Canada data room guide states, so absent a national-security angle neither review gates the close and the timetable is the advisor's. The ceiling case is a regulated industry: Laurentian Bank's split sale was announced December 2, 2025, received its final regulatory approvals August 31, 2026 and is expected to close November 1, 2026, eleven months on bank-approval clocks. Ask your advisor on day one which filings the buyer set could trigger and build the room for the longer path.

Which data room do Toronto advisors use?

None of the six firms on this page names its data-room vendor on the pages I read, so here is what I see rather than what they say. Bay Street public-company arrangements and special-committee processes usually run on Datasite or Intralinks because the counsel involved specifies them. In the mid-market, Firmex is the Toronto-headquartered name our Canada data room guide describes, with a documented Canadian storage region and quote-only pricing; Datasite has owned it since July 2021. Boutique sell-sides under roughly C$100 million increasingly run on flat-rate rooms, which is what I built Peony for: the Data Room plan at $52 per admin per month billed annually carries per-viewer dynamic watermarks, signed NDA gates, custom domains and unlimited rooms; view-only links, screenshot protection, remote revocation and the simple NDA start on Business at $30; password links, link expiry and page analytics are on the permanent free tier; redaction and archive download are on Deal Team at $64; 6,800+ customers run processes on it today, and it holds a 4.8 on G2 and a 4.9 on Capterra. On residency, the Canada data room guide states that PIPEDA does not require Canadian hosting; I add no new claim here.

What do Toronto M&A advisors charge?

No Toronto firm publishes a fee schedule, so use the dated North American survey and quote in Canadian dollars. Axial's 2026 M&A Fee Guide, 331 advisors surveyed in Q2 2026, puts sell-side success fees at roughly 2% to 10% of transaction value, reports that 71% of advisors charge some form of upfront fee, and finds Lehman-style declining formulas still the most common structure; the Firmex/Axial survey composite runs about 4.8% at $5 million, 3.4% at $20 million and 2.0% at $100 million. A Double Lehman scale (10%, 8%, 6% and 4% on the first four million, then 2%) produces C$600,000 on a C$20 million sale. That is a North American survey, not a Toronto one. Advisory fees attract GST/HST at the province's rate on top of the quoted percentage. Special-committee and fairness-opinion mandates are usually fixed fees rather than success fees, because a percentage of the price would compromise the opinion. Get the schedule, any minimum, whether the retainer is credited at close and the tail in writing.

Related resources

• Best M&A Advisors in Canada: the national page, with the LCGE, Budget 2025, NI 31-103, Investment Canada Act and Competition Act canon this page links to
• Best M&A Advisors in Calgary: the Alberta energy bench, and where ATB Cormark's energy ledger and Sequeira Partners belong
• Best M&A Advisors in Vancouver: the BC bench and the Canaccord and Raymond James head offices
• Best M&A Advisors: the master hub
• Best M&A Advisers in the UK and London: the other end of the DRC Heat Transfer to Smiths Group corridor, and where Peony's registered office sits
• Data Room Canada: PIPEDA, residency, Firmex, the TSX and TSXV scale and the 2026 Competition Act and Investment Canada Act thresholds
• M&A Advisor Fees: Lehman scales, retainers, tails and minimums
• Investors in Canada: the venture and growth lane, for a Toronto technology company that is raising rather than selling
• Peony for M&A: per-bidder rooms, gated contract folders and page analytics for a Toronto process

This article reflects my views as of September 2026 and is informational, not legal, tax or investment advice. Firm registrations, brands and ownership change; verify current status on CIRO's dealer list and the CSA National Registration Search, confirm Ontario and Toronto rates with a tax advisor, and read the federal rules on the national page before relying on them. Registration statements on this page reflect CIRO's dealer list and the CSA National Registration Search as checked on September 16 and 19, 2026. I am the co-founder of Peony, a data room company; where I mention Peony I have flagged the interest.