CS v Barclays IBD Summer Associate

Do you mean from an investment banking perspective or from an overall perspective?

From an overall perspective, I don't think DB will exist in 20 years in its current state / business model. I think CS has a chance but not a high one. The real issue for both of these guys - and the other BBs, American or European - is that financing deals is becoming much more difficult to justify from a risk perspective, largely due to post crisis regulation and considerably higher capital requirements. The guys worst hit by this right now are the European banks that historically do the most DIP / mezz / other high risk financing work, particularly in the US where there is the most corporate business / M&A / need for financing.

DB has a $1.8tn balance sheet (as of Q2 2016) and I believe it used to be considerably larger. As far as I know they have never been competitive from an M&A perspective but they have always had the advantage of running a considerable amount of the financings that came through the street. Higher capital requirements and increased scrutiny on where they put their money have made it difficult for them to continually win deals alongside JPM, BAML, Citi as they used to. While the heat is really on for them now in the news, they have really been declining for several years and nobody really pointed it out.

CS is a slightly different case, given the difference in priorities. Especially post crisis, CS has been very competitive from an M&A perspective. They have the same secular issues as DB when it comes to deploying capital efficiency but have a much stronger advisory practice (especially after exits of guys like Ratigan, Whittemore & Brand, the last of which was the guy who sourced Starwood - Marriott afaik). That's not to say the bank isn't in a rough spot, but it's not going to go under like DB might.

Specifically on the subject of the CS Tech guys who left - yes, it's a big deal that William Brady left, he was Quattrone-era and a very capable guy. The other four don't matter that much. I was not in SF this summer and can't say how the group is doing. CS TMT NY still places as it used to. It is hard to say whether CS is losing share in this category as Qatalyst and MS pretty much win every single mandate in tech these days. Enterprise software / semis / sponsor-backed seem to be categories CS excels in, less so the pure-play tech.

CS Healthcare is honestly the group that looks to be in a worrying spot to me, as it has had two separate waves of MDs leaving (one a few years ago, most of whom left to smaller boutiques, and one recently where three very snior guys left to Centerview). What is kind of telling to me is that Bayer used CS as lead for the whole sale but (supposedly) hired JPM to sell the derm unit to a pharma company.

From an investment banking perspective, I would recommend looking at what big deals ($10+ bn) the two banks have been on in the last 12 - 15 months in a lead advising capacity.

DB: Starwood - Marriott (lead buy-side) - November 2015

CS: Bayer - Monsanto (lead buy-side) - September 2016 Enbridge - Spectra (lead buy-side) - September 2016 Wells Fargo - GE Capital NA operations (co-lead sell-side with GS) - October 2015 Anthem - Cigna (co-lead buy-side with UBS) - August 2015 Berkshire - Precision Castparts (lead sell-side) - August 2015 NextEra - Oncor (co-lead buy-side with BAML) - July 2016 NXP - Freescale (lead buy-side) - December 2015 Dell - EMC (co-lead buy-side with JPM) - October 2015 Analog - Linear (lead buy-side) - July 2016

These lists are obviously quite incomplete as I pretty much did them off the top of my head. The point of this, however, was to show how little business DB has been winning recently in terms of the top 10 -15 deals per year.