Best groups in Chicago?

I'd imagine a lot of groups in chicago are like little brothers to their NY counterparts, focusing mainly on MM stuff. Which groups in Chicago work on the biggest deals, and rival like NY GS TMT and MS M&A? Do any even come close?

 

A lot of chicago groups are also more regionally focused than product or industry focused. What I mean is they have one catch-all "coverage" group for IBD and they work on anything and everything that's closer to their clients than a group in NY or San Fran can.

 

I think you misinterpreted his response. Orangebull is saying that for many bulge bracket banks, their Chicago office is more focused on deals that happen to be regionally located in the Midwest and man many times work horizontally across products or industries. For example, the GS Chicago office could working with CAT on a carve-out that could involve its Industrials group and likely its Lev Fin if it also plans on financing the deal.

Outside of GS, the best shop in Chicago is William Blair.

 
Best Response

the NYC offices of pretty much all the BBs are not regionally focused (i.e. they are not mainly doing deals located in the Northeast). I think that was the distinction that Orangebull was trying to draw and I can attest to this.

I think when you define what is the best in Chicago, you need to put some context around it. If it's strictly economics, are you talking about purely fees generated or fees/employee generated? Or are you talking about what is the best experience that can be provided to you at the analyst level due to quality deal flow and exit opps? In terms of exit opps, MDP and GTCR will tap all the top BB analysts in Chicago and some from NYC. Blair analysts see a lot of dealflow and have very good placement into buyside.

 

My experience from recruiting: No particular order within tiers

Top Tier: JPM (great industrials group), Citi (Head of North American M&A here poached most top guys from UBS, great Industrials team) Lazard (Restructuring head is there) Middle Tier: GS (doesn't always execute, very small intern class(4)), MS (same size intern class (4), doesn't have the strongest group but they seem solid) Bottom Tier: Barclays, Deutsche, UBS

I know that BAML and CS have practices as well but I'm not familiar so I won't rank. Greenhill also has a decent practice.

On the whole I'd say Chicago is about as good as SF if we were comparing their strength in industrials to SF's strength in tech. Both top notch regional places to work.

 

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