Lehman VS Goldman VS Lazard VS UBS

hey ya'll,

this site has been amazing, i have learned so much from everyone, so i finally decided to create an account!

i received IBD offers from Lehman, GS, UBS and Lazard, however I am completely unsure of which one to take. How would you rank those four?

would u mind ranking them in order for me of which one u would take first to last - in terms of exit opportunities, the deals you work on and the prestige of the bank? thanks so much.

38 Comments
 

im not saying that UBS is a bad bank but I am saying that lehman is a better one if you look at league tables, firms like lehman, Lazard are always going to be outranked and the reason is simple lehman has 28000 employees and 2000 bankers... ubs has 82000 employees almost three times the size of lehman and many many more bankers than lehman thus its easy for a bank like ubs, cs, Citi (over 120000 employees) to beat lehman in league tables based on number of deals, $ of deals, etc... if ubs has 3 bankers working for every 1 banker at lehman then its most likely that lehman will make less revenue what i think you should really look at is revenue or income or deals proportional to the number of employees or number of bankers. also, look at where the hedgefunds and pe firms recruit. yes alot of people from ubs go to good shops, but the headhunters will come to lehman to recruit first before going to ubs (genearlly) this being said ubs does have some advantages that lehman does not have. for example, in asia and europe, ubs destroys lehman hands down but in the US and by general reputation, lehman is the 3rd or 4th best bank on the street and ubs is a bit lower down the ladder

i also said that lazard is better than lehman even though lehman outclasses lazard at every league table except M&A. the reason why? simple.. lazard only provides a few products, and they do it very very well. just going by league table numbers is misleading, general take on the street is that lazard is very prestigious though people at alot of schools dont think so. i would say goldman is very good. not only do they lead alot of tables, they are also a very lean bank with under 40000 employees and less than. they area also good at everything, S&T, banking, private equity, etc...

 

I think Lehman is pretty overrated, but UBS has been taking a lot of hits recently (loss of Ken Moelis and the LA hitter team, huge writedowns, general exodus of bankers to other firms). Lazard is very prestigious but I did not like the people I met from that firm. I would put Goldman at the top and the other three around the same level. It really comes down to city/group/people.

 

dude first of all, my statements aren't any more definitive than the statements everyone posts on this blog second, yes UBS has 82000 employees and its true they have many more bankers than lehman i never said all 82000 employees were bringing in deals.. but the bankers should be bring in deals or doing deals and the fact they have more bankers (many more bankers than lehman since they are more of a global bank) is a pretty good explanation why they are ahead of lehman in alot of league table rankings and that league tables dont mean everything

also, my statement that goldman is good "at everything" is an exaggeration somewhat, sure. but is what is said wrong?
are you telling me goldman is not good at banking and M&A when they lead almost every year, that they aren't good at sales and trading when GS and DB are always on top of their trading game, that they aren't good at private equity when they have a huge GS Capital Partners and a strong PIA group that makes more private equity and principal investments than any other bank out there, that they aren't a lean bank by the fact that they lead alot of tables with less than 40,000 employees?

clearly, i actually have an idea of what im talking about because i back my statements up with actual FACTS. and clearly you dont because all you can say is that "you clearly have no idea what you're talking about."

please, tell me why you think UBS is a better bank than lehman and tell me why goldman is not good at banking???

 

yah my bad also i just have strong opinions about stuff sometimes in all seriousness, u probably know a shitload more than me about the banks anyways

 

4 offers? I thought this was supposed to be an off-year in recruiting. That's just sick.. Congrats on the offers, I would take Goldman unless you hated the people there.

 

BTW, Lazard's summer program is a Generalist program. Most of the projects will be in General Banking, but you might see some time in Life Sciences/FIG/Power & Energy. All are M&A groups. I think Restructuring takes their own interns but you can try to get on one of their projects by networking with people in the gorup.

 

go wherever you will feel most comfortable in terms of group, people, culture, etc. Each of those banks are solid, although some may say GS and Lazard are above the others. Also, lets stop this stupid ranking of the banks here and if you have specific questions about the aforementioned banks, ask them. these boards are aleady cluttered with these nonsense questions about "prestige" and "rankings"

 

Well-said, buysideguy. After spending a few nights in the office, you realize that all the prestige in the world won't make it any less miserable.

 

thanks for the advice all - extremely helpful.

i think one struggle that sounds really superficial is that im not comfortable that i understand Lazard's rep on campus. i go to a semi-target school and they hardly recruit here, so i am not quite sure of their rep on the street, and how good their deal flow is.

 

At Wharton, my impression is that people think of Lazard on the same tier as Goldman and Morgan prestige-wise if that helps. Their deal-flow is reputed to be very good. I know two people with Lazard offers this summer. One is going to Blackstone Tech M&A instead, and the other is trying to decide between Lazard, Moelis, and Citadel right now.

 

can we just ignore kingbling? all he does is post on every thread how much better lehman is than other BBs because he is going to work there over the summer. yay

 

Strange topic... At what position level you consider entering one of those banks? What country/city you are in? What industry/product you are interested in?

Without those details, it's a little bit pointless to talk about it.

Lazard = M&A, very good M&A. Very high prestige. GS IBD... several very strong groups, strong presence is some regions, but also some not very strong groups and weak positions in some regions. Very high prestige. Lehman... Maybe strongest bank in DCM (if you consider it to be a part of IBD), also have some good industry groups. Also a few mediocre groups, and weak presence in a number of regions. High prestige, and very specific (though to my taste appealing) culture. UBS... Good positioning in a number of regions where aforementioned banks are not doing well. Very European culture. Definitely some very good groups, but not all of them. Availability of strong balance sheet (something not available for banks above, to to UBS being a global banking group). Also, UBS sucked hard due to crisis, and the outlook for 2008 is negative for UBS. Might affect bonuses in the short run.

 

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