List of Boutiques to Avoid

couchy:

Aleutian Capital - I hear you don't do any modeling work. I hear they only MARKET deals (no dates on deals on the website) but don't actually complete any deals.

You do realize most interns do absolutely no modelling, and it is even rarer for an intern to close a deal, right?

Moelis....complete dog shit

Macquarie....10k bonus for all junior bankers

Id love to hear more on this thread. good idea couchy.

Blackmore Partners

Rutberg & Co Livingston Securities

No time to explain, but much has been written about them here.

Moehlis had great exits 2 years ago. down the hole now.

Way to destroy any kid that has one of these banks on their resume...

I was about to post in before Moelis, but its clearly to late for that

Moelis blows

Avoid all of them minus Lazard/Centerview/Evercore/Greenhill/Moelis, duh. What kind of stupid question is this.

The partners at the PE firm I work for consider Blackmore an "A" intermediary. They rank above the big investments banks because they bring unique deal flow w/ top exec to run the company.

evercore centerview lazard moelis hhlz qatalyst blackstone

I KID I KID!

my first PE firm was a "fundless sponsor". Know resources and you loose many deals to real PE funds. I learned to make sure to go to a firm that has at least $100M under management. My current firm has over $1B

nope! cannot spell, however, I can sure can model deals and my deal partner loves that!

Thank you! I have found out who I am! I am coming out of the closet as a "homophone".

as a 2nd year analyst, I report to a deal partner as a resource for the deals he brings into the firm.

Honestly, I think its ridiculous that other 19/20 year olds think you will be modeling at a boutique. Why the fuck would an MD make you complete a model without even knowing that you can properly create such model? Why would he give you, the barely out of high school young kid, the responsibility of making a model that he knows he will have to spend just as much time editing anyways? Everyone always thinks they will be modeling. That is 5% of what goes on in investment banking, and you definitely have to earn that responsibility. They are not going to blow a deal because they want to help you add a nice bullet point on your resume. I thought this was how it works too, but trust me it doesn't. Maybe at GS or an equivalent BB where you have a team of guys, but not at any boutique or MM

ValueAdder68:

Honestly, I think its ridiculous that other 19/20 year olds think you will be modeling at a boutique. Why the fuck would an MD make you complete a model without even knowing that you can properly create such model? Why would he give you, the barely out of high school young kid, the responsibility of making a model that he knows he will have to spend just as much time editing anyways? Everyone always thinks they will be modeling. That is 5% of what goes on in investment banking, and you definitely have to earn that responsibility. They are not going to blow a deal because they want to help you add a nice bullet point on your resume. I thought this was how it works too, but trust me it doesn't. Maybe at GS or an equivalent BB where you have a team of guys, but not at any boutique or MM

Lol what? You are waaaayyy off base here, I would only expect modeling at a boutique or MM. At smaller shops yes there are fewer resources, but you're typically not 1 of 50 kids in an SA class. You'll spend more time working with the deal team and they'll want to wring a little work out of you besides doing BS due diligence on CapIQ. I interned at a MM fund and had the glorious task of building all of the new Operating Models for LBOs. I created a basic 3-Statement Model, dropped in a B/S cap. structure and built all the toggles to switch the transaction structure, and cases. Then I got the fuck out of the way and let the Associate drive the model, but I saved him about 2-3 hrs of work every couple of days as new CIMs came in. I knew my way around Excel going into the internship and they threw me a bone and let me do the easiest parts of the LBOs, still it was helpful. Doubt you'd see this at a BB.

That's pretty sweet, well I can tell you from experience, most boutiques are not like this. They don't NEED the interns. They are doing the interns a favor really. Sure they don't have a large number of analysts/associates like other firms, but they got by perfectly fine with what they have. I think at assumption goes for "most" firms is what I meant. That is great that you got to do that, I think that is a lucky experience. Most firms around this size leave the modeling for the ones they KNOW are capable of it. A.K.A the analysts who are there full time regardless if the intern is there or not. Most firms have this ideaology. And to add to your point, the "BS Cap IQ work" is very important to the process whether you believe that or not. Someone has to do it. They give interns that stuff. You are very lucky to get any modeling experience.

ValueAdder68:

That's pretty sweet, well I can tell you from experience, most boutiques are not like this. They don't NEED the interns. They are doing the interns a favor really. Sure they don't have a large number of analysts/associates like other firms, but they got by perfectly fine with what they have. I think at assumption goes for "most" firms is what I meant. That is great that you got to do that, I think that is a lucky experience. Most firms around this size leave the modeling for the ones they KNOW are capable of it. A.K.A the analysts who are there full time regardless if the intern is there or not. Most firms have this ideaology. And to add to your point, the "BS Cap IQ work" is very important to the process whether you believe that or not. Someone has to do it. They give interns that stuff. You are very lucky to get any modeling experience.

Is this a joke? You have to learn modelling somewhere (and I'm not talking about BIWS or WSO - no offense Patrick). If your firm isn't willing to teach you, that says something about your firm. Our MD couldn't model for shit, so I learned from our VP and Sr. Associate in my group.

Cap IQ work is grunt work. You can outsource that shit for dirt cheap. You can get a basic comps value through CapIQ in literally a minute. A high school kid could do that. The important part is taking the result, understanding it, and implementing it properly into your pitch, process, etc.

agreed. I dnt knw wtf I would have done if I didn't have training for 8 weeks before I started full time lol BIWS is good but too academic and not as applicable.