In Bolton town centre, just around the corner from Primark, you will find the offices of Hilton Smythe, a small business broker. If you fancy buying a coffee shop, a café or a takeaway, “we have just what you are looking for”, says its website. The latest deal it handled was the £1.3m sale of a cattery in Haywards Heath.

Not quite Goldman Sachs. Yet, according to Refinitiv, some small advisory firms you have probably never heard of made huge sums in last year’s corporate deals boom.