Business Description

Established in 1972, Houlihan Lokey, Inc. is a leading global independent investment bank with expertise in mergers and acquisitions (“M&A”), capital markets, financial restructurings, liability management, and financial and valuation advisory services. We serve a diverse set of clients worldwide, including corporations, financial sponsors and government agencies. We provide our financial professionals with an integrated platform that enables them to deliver meaningful and differentiated advice to our clients. We advise our clients on critical strategic and financial decisions, employing a rigorous analytical approach coupled with deep product and industry expertise. We market our services through our product areas, our industry groups and our Financial Sponsors group, serving our clients in three business segments: Corporate Finance (“CF”), encompassing M&A and capital solutions; Financial Restructuring (“FR”), including restructurings both out-of-court and in formal bankruptcy or insolvency proceedings; and Financial and Valuation Advisory (“FVA”), including financial opinions and a variety of valuation and financial consulting services. We are committed to a set of principles that serve as the backbone of our success. Independent advice and intellectual rigor, combined with consistent senior-level involvement, are hallmarks of our commitment to client service. Our entrepreneurial culture engenders our flexibility to collaborate across our business practices to provide world-class solutions for our clients. Our broad-based employee ownership serves to align the interests of employees and shareholders, and further encourages a collaborative environment where our CF, FR, and FVA professionals work together to solve our clients’ most critical financial issues. We enter into businesses or offer services where we believe we can excel based on our expertise, analytical sophistication, industry focus and competitive dynamics. Finally, we remain independent and specialized, focusing on advisory products and market segments where our expertise is both differentiating and less subject to conflicts of interest arising from non-advisory products and services. We do not engage in any lending, securities sales and trading, or investment research that might conflict with our clients’ interests. As of March 31, 2026, we had a team of more than 1,900 financial professionals across more than thirty offices globally, serving more than 2,000 clients annually, ranging from closely held companies to Fortune Global 500 corporations. Information on our business segments is set forth in “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations.” Our Advisory Services We market our services through our three business practices described below, our industry groups and our Financial Sponsors group, who work collaboratively to deliver comprehensive solutions and seamless execution for our clients. This marketing effort is combined with an extensive network of relationships with law firms, consulting firms, accounting firms, and other professional services firms and industry participants that have been developed by our financial professionals, who maintain those relationships both as potential referral sources and as direct clients across our business practices. Corporate Finance As of March 31, 2026, we had 251 CF Managing Directors who are able to provide our clients with extensive industry and product expertise and global reach in a wide variety of M&A and capital markets transactions. We compete with boutique firms focused on particular industries or geographies as well as other global independent investment banks and bulge-bracket firms. A majority of our engagements relate to mid-cap transactions, which we believe is an attractive segment that is underserved by bulge-bracket investment banks. We believe that our deep sector expertise, significant senior banker involvement and attention, strong financial sponsor relationships, and global platform provide compelling value for our clients, engendering long-term relationships and providing a competitive advantage against our peers in this segment of the market. We believe that we have a meaningful presence in every major industry segment, including: business services; consumer; energy; financial services; fintech; healthcare; industrials; real estate; and technology.…