Jefferies ER vs. Wachovia ER

Don't know anything about comp/hours/work-life etc. but I do know that Jefferies probably has some of the best healthcare research reports. GS is also up there, with DB and CS slightly below (though there have been a couple of awful CS reports).

as far as the street is concerned, wachovia and jefferies are basically the same tier. what you should really be thinking about is the quality of the analyst you will be working with, as well as how much visibility you will be getting. if you already work in research, you must already understand how much of your experience will be shaped by the analyst.

also, for what it's worth, i know healthcare research well and it's pretty easy to guess who you'd be working with at each firm....and my sense is the analyst at wachovia seems to have more street cred than the ones at jefferies. in fact, one of the jefferies analysts got canned about a year ago for violating firm policy, doing something pretty ridiculous like trying to pump his own calls or by spreading rumors about stocks under coverage in order to generate trade commissions, or something to that effect. i can't remember what happened for sure but people "in the know" didn't seem particularly surprised.

Jefferies is one the best research department in the street specifically for the internet software department.

Fair enough. I was pretty impressed by the level of depth and understanding on a few of the Jefferies managed care reports- too often most managed care analyst reports devolve into spewing of projections and discussing the sensitivities of MLR. Pharma was a little shaky, the dude didn't really seem to understand pipeline dynamics/reasonable estimates for FDA approval.

Wachovia acquired A.G. Edwards in the past year, creating a relatively large equity research universe, which should help with visibility on the street. I/m not sure who remained from which camp on the Healthcare team, but shouldn't be hard to determine via Bigdough or an internet search.