More than a few boutique investment banks have gone public over the last decade. Now Houlihan Lokey, one of the oldest, is planning to take that step.

The firm filed for an initial public offering on Friday afternoon, looking to join rivals like Evercore Partners, Greenhill & Company, and Moelis & Company in having stock that it can use for acquisitions and pay for its bankers.

Independent and boutique investment banks, which lack the huge trading operations and lending arms of traditional Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, have enjoyed a rise in work over the past five years amid the merger boom.

That has been somewhat reflected in those banks’ stock prices. Shares in Evercore Partners have climbed 130.6 percent over the past five years, and Lazard has risen 83.9 percent. The stock of Moelis & Company, the last big independent firm to go public, has risen 11 percent since it began trading in 2014.