Houlihan Lokey Debuts In The Market, CEO Sees Continuing Growth In Mid Cap M&A

Boutique investment banking firm Houlihan Lokey Inc HLI made a decent debut on the New York Stock Exchange with its shares trading up nearly 9 percent from the IPO price.

Houlihan Lokey's CEO, Scott Beiser, was on CNBC post the stock's debut on NYSE to share his outlook for M&A activity going forward.

Continue To Grow In Mid-Cap M&A

"The opportunities for us still are great," Beiser began. "We continue to grow in the M&A area, in the mid-cap space that we focus on, our restructuring business is doing well. We perceive, interest rates will start climbing, the oil sector is going to be a lot of work for us out there; there's opportunities."

Restructuring Accounts For One-Third

Beiser revealed the size of the company's M&A business, compared to restructturing business, saying, "In our last year, about two-thirds of our business was focused on M&A in I'll call it the healthy parts of the market and about a third of our business is still in the financial restructuring and works on distressed transactions."

Mid-Cap M&A Relatively Immune To Market Cycles

On the outlook for M&A going forward, Beiser said, "We are in the mid-cap space. It is such a large field out there. There's always people needing to do transactions. [And we] absolutely have nothing to do with the interest rates in the market place in general. So, we see growth in our marketplace. Not only from what's happening in the industry itself, but just the transition of ownership of businesses."