Alvarez and Marsal: opportunities in Restructuring/Turnaround, Real Estate, and Corporate Finance?

I was checking these guys out. Seems like the attractive opportunities might be in Restructuring/Turnaround, Real Estate, and corporate finance (which sounds like vanilla M&A Advisory).

Also consulting and tax. Seems kind of like a Duff & Phelps type - a couple of different advisory services under one roof. Is this an accurate impression?

Anyone have any thoughts or experiences, besides what's already on their website? Good shop?

 

Thanks for both impressions. It does seem like almost everyone is a CPA there.

I don't care so much about exit opps, prestige, or hours. Deal experience is very important. I can make my own exit opps, as long as the work is real deal work.

Goldson, can you elaborate on what you mean by bad place to work? Is it a brand name/prestige thing (ie lack thereof) or bad culture?

 
Best Response

My co-worker over the summer used to work at Alvarez in Restructuring. I know that he worked on at least two big companies(Yukos and Warnaco(owner of Calvin KleiN)) but I don't know about the other companies since he never talked about them.

Their restructuring isn't the same as an investment-bank restructuring practice(ex: Blackstone, Lazard, etc.), instead what he told me is that they come in and just run the company and decide what improvements need to be made while billing at something like a $400 rate for an out-of-undergrad analyst, and going up a lot as rank increases. The work he described was a lot more consulting-type than investment-bank style restructuring.

 

I was wondering why half the MD's bios say "interim CFO" or "interim COO" for 5 or 8 different companies. Makes sense now. I think.

Does it seem weird to you that they actually assume an officer role like that? Taking control of the company, but charging an hourly fee?

I always thought you had to choose. Either do consulting/advisory for a fee, or buy control of the company and get equity. This seems like a hybrid. Does any other firm do this?

Anyway, keep the opinions coming. I would be looking at them as a post-mba associate-type thing.

 

Interviewed there about a year and a half ago. Interviewer spent several minutes telling me how shitty their office in NYC was (I was in a different office), and that they pride themselves on being "minimalists" because it reflects the culture of the founders. Didn't get as far as comp, etc. I was kind of turned off after the interview and turned down the round 2. Probably just some random interviewer who didn't go about telling me things the right way, but just my 2 cents.

 
da chief:

Hope that helps.

Can't imagine it did
"After you work on Wall Street it’s a choice, would you rather work at McDonalds or on the sell-side? I would choose McDonalds over the sell-side.” - David Tepper
 

Do you mind sharing his background/future career goals (i.e. mba)? Just curious as it seems like most of the A&M people I know are ex-Big Four auditors and plan to use A&M as their transaction/finance-ish line item on their resume before applying to Bschool. Just curious if that's across the board or just unique to my small sample of friends.

 

I spoke to a Director over there...brief phone conversation that happened maybe a month ago. Was for a position in their Chicago office. From what he told me, a lot of the restructuring work is M&A related - you'd be working on live deals, doing 13-week cash flows. They look for people who have a finance/accounting background hence banking. Although I also turned down second round. My friends in consulting didn't have a great impression of A&M and I couldn't find much info on exit opps

 

I can't tell you a thing about lifestyle, comp, exit, etc but they have a very solid reputation in the turnaround, restructuring and bk world. They'll role their sleeves up and get involved more operationally and in financial ops than a more traditional consulting firm but they're good and their senior guys tend to come from good operations and CF backgrounds (as opposed to being bankers or consultants from day one).

 

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