For a long time, mobility was seen as a sector not worth the trouble.
It wasn’t mature. It wasn’t predictable. A lot of innovative mobility companies were emerging, raising initial capital with ambitious plans to scale but many of them didn’t make it. Bankruptcies became a common part of the story.
And so much of the financial world stayed away with investment banks and late-stage investment firms deciding mobility wasn’t worth the time it would take to truly understand.
But while scepticism dominated the headlines, something else was brewing in the background. Category leaders emerged. Consolidation took hold. Profitability became standard and business models hardened.
Some may have missed that shift. Others didn’t. Among those paying close attention was Stifel which recently acquired Bryan Garnier, a highly regarded European investment bank in the mobility sector.
“Mobility is no longer an emerging niche for investors,” Florent Roulet, Managing Director in Stifel’s Technology Investment Banking team, tells Zag Daily.
“Some players are raising significant equity and debt. They’re completing very complex transactions. They’re worth millions and billions on private or public markets. That makes mobility a very important economic sector.”
The Bryan Garnier acquisition
Founded in 1890, Stifel accelerated its expansion into mobility last year with the acquisition of Bryan, Garnier & Co, a well-known name in the European growth technology scene which had previously advised mobility players such as Driiveme and GAC in France.
Stifel doesn’t invest its own capital but acts as a financial advisor to companies across the full transaction lifecycle, offering both investment banking and wealth management services.
The Bryan Garnier deal brought Stifel’s total workforce to more than 9,000 employees across North America and Europe, with a European headcount of nearly 300 in offices across London, Paris, Munich, Frankfurt and Stockholm.
For Bryan Garnier, the upside was a clear path into both the US and Canada. “As mobility companies moved from niche experiments to million-dollar valuations, IPOs, large private financings and cross-border acquisitions are no longer theoretical,” says Roulet, nodding to Stifel’s role in advising Germany’s Wiferion on a sale to US-based Tesla.
“I now have colleagues on the ground in North America who live and breathe that market. That gives me local insight I can bring straight back to European clients, whether they’re looking for potential investors or buyers.”
Today, mobility is one of the largest sector verticals within Stifel’s technology franchise division in Europe. The team covers a broad spectrum of subsectors from urban shared mobility and micromobility to electric transport and charging infrastructure, parking, batteries, fleet management and logistics.
“As one of Europe’s most active investment banks on mobility, we can give our clients detailed insights about the underlying sector dynamics and market appetite.”
What it means to be a mobility investment banker
Over the last few years, Stifel has been building sector-focused investment banking teams.
A dedicated mobility team spends most of its time analysing the sector, tracking and advising operators, suppliers, manufacturers, software vendors and platforms.
For Roulet, specialisation is the differentiator. Advising mobility companies isn’t just about investment banking skills but rather having a deep sector fluency and connections to the relevant players. Stifel’s IRIS product is an example of that, helping feed market insights directly into client work.
“We don’t need our clients to spend hours explaining the basics.” Roulet states unapologetically.
“That expertise saves time and money. When we start working with an EV charging infrastructure client, we already know the economics, the competitive landscape and the likely exit routes before we even start the engagement.”
Stifel recently leveraged that EV charging sector knowledge when advising on the sale of France’s Ze-Watt to a private equity investor.
“By knowing who the buyers are going to be and which investors are looking for this kind of asset, we can be selective and avoid contacting hundreds of potential counterparties. We also know very well how to pitch an opportunity to them.”
Roulet says the firm can support “any situation you can imagine in investment banking”.
“Whether it’s selling the company, raising equity and debt or restructuring ownership by exiting early investors through secondary transactions. Whatever the structure, we can cover it both on the private and public side.”
When a client isn’t ready to transact, Roulet says the firm can help shape the company’s long-term strategy, be it prioritising profitability or tapping into a new market that will be attractive to future buyers or investors.
Why the track record matters
Credibility doesn’t come from confidence alone.
“Without a portfolio of relevant former clients, our sector track-record wouldn’t mean anything,” Roulet says.
“When a new mobility company calls us, we encourage them to reference their experience with Stifel and check where some of our former clients are now. Raising money is important but what matters more is what becomes of the company after the deal,” Roulet says, highlighting Stifel’s role in advising EasyPark – now Arrive – which scaled to 90 countries after private equity investor Vitruvian invested to fuel its international strategy.
It’s that combination of sector insights and credibility that Roulet believes sets Stifel’s specialists apart from broader investment banking firms.
Once dismissed as immature and uninvestable, mobility has not only grown up but continues to be one of technology’s most rapidly evolving verticals with autonomous solutions hitting global streets and electrification progressively impacting all transportation modes.
For those who took the time to understand it early, the payoff is now very real.
