I follow PEHUB and saw that a PE Firm I know retained Edgeview Partners, a small IB firm based in Charolotte, NC for a sell-side. I clicked through their website and saw they have 22 analysts and 13 associates! That's a lot of analysts for an outfit I have never really heard of! They all have "704" telephone numbers listed so they appear to be in the same office.
What are these guys doing with respect to recruiting? Are two of their analysts equal to one BB analyst or are they on to something? When I started ML 4 years ago, there were only 120-130 global analysts. Why does this place require 22!?
looks like the whitest investment bank i've ever seen though. where are the asians? no jewish kids? wharton nerds? anything?
whos doing the models? makes me think its a shitty firm.
This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever read. I'd be pissed and offended, but I decided to give both you and the person who first posted the benefit of the doubt and just consider you ignorant instead of just f'ng retarded. How do you work in investment banking and not understand the middle market? I can't generalize all of BB I-Bankers because it wouldnt be right, but I'll do it in light of the first two posts. Edgeview primarily focuses on sell-side M&A. Why would they do a buyers model for them? (with the exception of when they are trying to prove out a higher value or something) They write a book, market the business and sell it to the highest bidder. That said, there is a hell of a lot of work to get a deal done and I guarantee they have worked at least as much as anyone at a big bank.
As for hiring, it goes like this: They recruit at southern schools. Why? They are in Charlotte. I believe one post said that Charlotte doesn't even have electricity yet. When you are located in a city that has that kind of a reputation and not a whole lot of brand equity like a BB, how in the hell are you going to get someone from a top-school up north to come down? You are not, it is just a huge waste of money to recruit for such a small firm. But think about this, you can make fun of Charlotte all you want, but they get paid the same as you, live in a lot nicer homes and probably pay half or less of what you do. As for white and greek, fine. I wont even touch that. I will say however that they lack the gelled-hair, designer t-shirt d-bags like I have to imagine half of these posters would remind me of (i.e. this guy:
). Thank god for that. As for the type of people they hire, race aside (which has nothing to do with it dumba$$), they hire people that can talk. Not the number crunching pricks who are getting outsourced to india like some of the BB (referring to first two posters). Why is it like that? The analysts are on the phone with clients everyday, including CFOs and CEOs trying to get all the facts straight. If you cant do that but your good at modeling you wouldnt survive. That said, if they want, almost all of the analysts get placed in various private equity firms across the country, so I can promise you they know how to model as well. Do you know what private equity is? I believe 60-80 percent of their deals involve private equity firms in some fashion (Either the client themselves or the buyer) so Edgeview's analysts have a lot of access to MM PEGs.
Its just a different business model from a BB all together. You have probably only looked at one deal your entire career at the BB, so you may not know that different companies operate using different business models. An Edgeview Analyst may see as many as 10 deals during a 2 year stint.
I agree, but at a BB the layers of different business models you see at large companies along with the varying levels of complexity provide for a great background. At a MM you see more companies, but you see fewer super complex business models under one roof.
You're right, if all you can ever do is "model" then you're not going to survive unless that is your life's calling.
I was on the phone quite often with the key BU head or CFO covering facts, but the most of the kids at a lot of BB are good at modeling AND good at conversing, granted some suck but that's bound to occur everywhere. Some BB'ers get pigeonholed behind a computer but often open-up after getting out of the IB atmosphere when they work elsewhere. If you understand the complexities that go into a model, you can breath and consequently speak to those complexities at higher levels later on in your life (i.e. understanding relationships between certain variables, etc...).
I don't mean to be caustic, but rather counter-weight your argument in a positive fashion.
fucking relax dude. I'd be pissed and offended, but I decided to give you the benefit of the doubt and just assume youre on fucking roids and you can't control yourself.
obviously it was a joke. i couldnt care less about your firm or the business model. i'm just saying that from the appearance of the website and the team your bank lacks the heavy asian, jewish and indian populations of every other bank on wall street. its an observation that is completely true.
but i understand how you feel. honestly no hard feelings. best of luck on all of your sell-sides. i feel for you man. is like 80% of your day spent uploading data rooms and sending out NDAs?
and every one of them is greek. I am Greek as well, but I just find it interesting that it's listed on each of their bios. And very white, indeed! Probably have a sweet holiday dance party!
How many Edgeview analysts does it take to build a model? Can't be done, electricity hasn't reached Charlotte yet.
All jokes aside, I think most middle market banks have around that number for analysts / associates (just looked at Harris Williams as an example). There are some decent looking analysts...
Haha, I found the diversity.
http://www.edgeviewpartners.com/professionals/?view=bio&grouptypeid=1&p…
I find the cursive text below the main logo, 'investment bankers,' humorous.
What is even more humorous is that the worst performing analysts at Edgeview received compensation equal to the top performers at many of the bulge brackets. The reason they have so many analysts is that dealflow is incredibly high at the top middle market banks, even compared to the bulge brackets. It is my understanding that each of Edgeview's deals are staffed with a single analyst throughout the life of the deal. Each of their analysts are likely working on multiple live transactions and closing numerous deals throughout their two-year tenure. A lot of these analysts are incredibly bright but chose to remain in the South to build their careers. So keep on making fun of them, but they're the ones laughing all the way to the bank.
Note: I do not work for Edgeview; they are actually a competitor of ours.
Why don't bulges take this middle-market business in down times? Too much ego or MM clients are distrustful of the big boys?
They do.
http://www.drmarkklein.blogspot.com/
I'm from the South and love it, but the amount of middle market boutqiue kool-aid you're drinking is insane. Most deal teams at banks are 4-5 people, and they all do the deal from pitch to closing dinner. So yes, most people will work on multiple live deals and close multiple deals in their two-years.
For my third-year I worked at a solid MM and we weren't staffed that heavily at the bottom level, although we did have more analysts but we also had many many more deals.
Honestly, the bulge bracket banks start appearing more in the middle market during these poor market conditions. However, I believe there is a bit of a disconnect between the BB business model and the MM business model, especially as it pertains to pitching. Let me explain how the pitch process works at my bank:
We have 5 positions, MD, D, VP, Associate, Analyst. Each deal is typically staffed with 1 of each level, and almost never has more than 1 analyst and 1 associate. The deal team does not change throughout the entire deal unless the analyst completes their analyst tenure.
We typically have 1-3 week lead times on each of our pitches, sometimes more, sometimes less. The analyst is responsible for pretty much every component of the pitch. The analyst researches which Comparable Companies / Transaction Comps would be a good fit and then spreads them himself. The analyst probably spends 30-60 minutes running the DCF/LBO analysis and makes the assumptions up on the fly. No calculating WACC or modeling out complex projections. Plug in a 15% WACC, use management's growth projections, make leverage assumptions, and roll on. If you spend more than 60 minutes modeling in the pitch, you've outdone yourself.
The worst part of the pitch is determining the appropriate buyers. Because these companies often operate in much smaller niches and will sell for $50 - $500 million, the buyer universe is rarely obviously and there are a ton of names out there. The analyst uses CapIQ and other tools to determine who the appropriate buyers are based on business model, financial capability, and other such criteria. Finding and "spreading" the appropriate strategic buyer group can take days. As for private equity firms, there are thousands out there that play in the middle market. Considerable time is spent scanning for relevant holdings to determine who has knowledge in your company's industry.
The analyst also is the one who assembles the entire presentation. All charts and graphs are built from scratch in excel. There is no "presentation" department which creates things for you. You're completely on your own here.
All of this thought goes into each pitch and the majority of the pitch is customized for the particular deal. The bulge brackets, quite simply, have a very different approach to pitching. They pitch everything under the sun and tend to focus heavily on the numbers and not nearly as much on the qualitative stuff. In addition, many of the companies that trade hands in the middle market are owned by private equity firms. The middle market banks are the ones who maintain the strongest relationships with the middle market private equity firms and are therefore advantaged from the get-go. This isn't always the case, but we have some private equity clients who we have represented numerous times. In fact, we have one particular client for whom we have sold their last 5 portfolio exits...
Now, all this isn't to say that the big guys don't come down and start to take business in the middle market. They certainly do. It just makes winning the upper-middle market deals more difficult and generally means we're working on slightly smaller transactions. This isn't that big a deal for us as we have relatively little infrastructure to support. The big guys rely on pulling in massive fees per deal.
And lastly, many of the middle market banks are working at, or close to, capacity. We turn down over 50% (I think it is closer to 70%) of the leads that come in. If our competition starts to increase, there is still plenty of business for us to chase, it just isn't the creme of the crop that we would chase if there was less competition.
I recognize that response was very all over the place, but the truth is the middle market is incredibly more resilient than the bulge brackets to market downturns.
Which one of the 100 analysts is you? Relax man. Granted, alot of the posts are pretty dumb. But I think this is just a joke-sort of topic. Don't they have banker humor in Charlotte? It's known to be blatantly sexist, testosterone injected, and racist at times.
Unless anyone would like to claim they were serious.
"I will say however that they lack the gelled-hair, designer t-shirt d-bags like I have to imagine half of these posters would remind me of"
Coorsman, I couldn't agree more
Coorsman, I think the sweet tea is making you a little jittery.
These are predominiantly joke responses. I'm from the South, and was 50 / 50 between coming to NY BB or a Southeast MM. Everyone knows Charlotte and every corner of the South has electricity.
The chip on your shoulder must be heavy.
I din't see dates but assuming they did those deal over 5 years, they're no slouches.
http://www.edgeviewpartners.com/clients/transaction_listing/?transactio…
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