How FSG Tiers and Maps Sponsor Relationships

Introduction

The scarcest input in sponsor coverage is senior attention, and the coverage list is how a financial sponsors group (FSG) budgets it. Houlihan Lokey said in October 2025 that its sponsors team of more than 35 professionals, 23 of them managing directors (MDs) in eight countries, manages approximately 1,900 relationships, from private equity firms to sovereign wealth funds. That is roughly 80 relationships per MD, and no team can give 80 firms equal weight. The working list is therefore a ranking: client tiering decides who gets a senior pair and a monthly meeting, relationship mapping records whom the bank knows at each client, and measures of relationship depth show whether the time is paying.

A coverage list starts as an inventory of the sponsor universe, but its entries sit below the logo:

A sponsor with 40 portfolio companies is 40 borrowers plus the firm, and many mandates arrive through a company's chief financial officer (CFO). The list lives in a customer relationship management (CRM) system, usually beside the deal tracker that records every process a sponsor entered.

Tiering asks how much a client is likely to pay the bank over the next few years, and whether the bank can win it. The starting point is estimated wallet, the fees a client is thought to spend across advisory, financing and equity work. Banks buy that estimate: Dealogic says more than 40 of the world's leading banks run their investment banking strategy and wallet analysis on its fee model, London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) sells a rival fee algorithm, and Coalition Greenwich supplies client-level wallet analytics that banks can load into their CRM. Why vendor totals differ is set out in the sponsor fee pool.

Client Tiering

Ranking a bank's clients into coverage tiers by estimated wallet, expected activity and the bank's ability to win business, then matching senior time, junior support and meeting frequency to each tier. Criteria, tier counts and review cycles are set by each bank.

Wallet looks backward, so groups score several factors:

The middle rows come from the fund model, which is why tiering reads dry powder and distribution pressure as well as fees. Product fit cuts both ways: a lending bank may rank a syndicated-loan borrower above a direct-lending one, while an adviser with no balance sheet may not.

Capital catches clients the wallet misses. 26North, founded in 2022 by Apollo co-founder Josh Harris, announced the close of its debut private equity fund at about $5.9 billion in April 2026, above a $4 billion target. A ranking built on past fees would have placed it near the bottom.

Senior Pairs, Dedicated Teams and Shared Coverage

Patterns differ by bank, but three recur:

An analyst on a top-tier account rebuilds its deck before every meeting; one on the long tail follows dozens of firms through announcements, a difference examined in FSG hours and the relationship versus execution split.

Mapping People and Portfolio Companies

A tier sets how much time a client gets; a map shows where it goes.

Relationship Map

A record of the people at a client who influence or decide which banks are hired, such as deal partners, the head of capital markets and portfolio company CFOs, showing which banker knows each one and how well.

The people map follows the split between deal partners and capital markets heads described in how sponsors choose their banks: a bank close to the capital markets head but unknown to the healthcare partners is covered for financings and exposed on that team's next sale. The portfolio map shows, company by company, whether the bank leads, sits in or is absent from the bank group, and it feeds the sponsor portfolio review.

From Wallet Share to Roles Held

The headline measure is wallet share, fees earned divided by estimated wallet. Groups read it beside measures of position:

Position matters because sponsors, like league tables, treat the lead differently. Hypothetically, a bank earning $5 million of a sponsor's $50 million wallet has a 10% share, but if it all came from one sale, the bank holds no place in the financings that recur. Goldman Sachs reported at its February 2023 investor day that it was a top-three provider to 77 of its top 100 fixed income, currencies and commodities (FICC) and equities clients, up from 51 in 2019, using its own scorecards and Coalition Greenwich rankings, and planned to expand the list to 150. That is a markets business, but the mechanics carry over: a ranked list, a depth measure, a target.

Call Logs, Conflicts and the Control Room

The CRM is also a record the bank may have to defend: call notes show what was discussed with whom, and relationship data helps conflicts teams see which clients a mandate touches. The control room keeps its own files; a 2012 Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) staff review of information barriers found that every broker-dealer examined kept a watch or grey list, generated from a database of matters reported to it. The barriers themselves are explained in why banks cover a client type.

Re-Tiering Each Year

Many groups run an annual re-tiering and move clients in between when a fund event demands it:

A sponsor that closes a larger fund or starts harvesting an old one changes what it buys, the cycle traced in the fund lifecycle from the coverage seat.

Every client family enters the list in its own way: a mega fund as several entries under one logo, a middle-market sponsor on deal count, a sovereign on the deals it now leads, a credit manager on the companies it ended up owning. A tier is a forecast of next year's wallet, and each re-tiering grades it: clients that paid more than predicted move up, and time spent on those that paid less goes elsewhere.