Investment Banking in Miami

cowboy tex:

brickell between 5th and 15th is lined with central and south american bank presence - i'm just not sure how much IB they do out of those offices.

Anyone happen to have a list of these places? Or does the regional boutique thread pretty much cover it?

energy_fin_guy:

Not that I know unfortunately. It would seem like a strategic area for the IB health care sector as well as Latin America.

Healthcare and biotechnology are certainly the strongest emerging sectors within the South Florida economy. I believe that Morgan Joseph focuses entirely on healthcare IB in Miami. I have also heard that Citi has a Latin American IBD office/presence in Miami.

Hey man i'm currently in that boat. I am from the Miami area and currently a sophomore in college. Do you think if I try getting an internship at a reputable bank (e.g GS) in Miami, would it help my chances for NY at the same firm. Ik your comment is almost ten years but f*** it.

HIG Capital. They are known as being pretty sketchy though.

Look on the rgional boutiques thread up top, you can find almost any city there. I would imagine it has Miami

You don't even have to get off your couch, let me get your pay check too. http://tinyurl.com/4qj3d7g

Thanks for the tips! They are greatly appreciated

HIG has been around for a while and is a top pe firm. They are known for doing lots of deals and for fantastic returns (their investors have been quite happy). They are audited by Crowe Horwath which is one of the largest accounting firms in the U.S.

The Brilla group sounds like it would be an awesome firm to work for

http://www.brillagroup.com/

Hate the cold too. Anybody working in MM PE down there up for a PM?

learn how to speak spanish, this isn't a joke post

I know that for LatAm that plus Portuguese are necessities, is it as true in healthcare or PE?

Well in the first part you talk about regions and the second part you talk about an industry group and industry. Not all healthcare groups or PE firms will require you to know Spanish. Working for a firm focused on Latin America, it will depend. If you're working mainly on Brazil, you may have to know Portuguese (everywhere else speaks Spanish). Neither is an absolute necessity, though as michael-wso said, working in Miami you will probably need to know Spanish due to the high Spanish-speaking population.

I'm interested in this as well, anyone with experience in South Fla?

I'm more committed to Miami than I am to a specific group or even Industry (PE or IB is fine). I live here so I speak enough Spanish to get by, but not nearly enough to do a deal. I've heard if you want to do finance here it's either healthcare or LatAm, are there any groups other than Ladenburg or Crosskeys which either have a bunch of groups or are industry agnostic?

http://dealbreaker.com/2007/11/deutsche-bank-alex-brown-is-the-greatest…

HIG Capital is a close to billion dollar PE firm down in Miami, I also believe Goldman has some ibanking down there, although it might be more pwm for their wealthy latam clients

Get as high of a GPA as possible and transfer to a target ASAP.

Not a big BB presence. In fact, not sure any BBs have IB offices in Miami at all. There are a few boutique IBs and I think Oppenheimer might have a team down there. Some PE / HFs are based in Miami, too. There's definitely plenty of private banking and wealth management type roles, though you probably need to speak Spanish as they're largely targeted toward wealthy latin-americans.

Citi has both a summer analyst & 6 month internship program for IB in its Latam Regional Offices in Miami. For this particular internship, networking is not necessary- you just submit your resume. ~500 applicants for 6 month internships across all divisions, don't know the breakdown for banking.

While I was searching for jobs out of college, I applied to a few positions in Miami. I studied in Spain for a year including Spanish language classes and an internship that was primarily Spanish-speaking. I applied to some private banking/wealth management type roles and one or two banking shops if I remember correctly and most wanted at least proficient spanish skills. The one group I interviewed ended up not being a fit because they were looking for a native speaker (my spanish was solid, but not enough to be 100% all the time communicating with spanish-speaking clients). I was told this tended to be group dependent and some groups may be fine with non-native speakers with strong skills.

I would imagine the language skills are much less of a need on the PE/HF side, and maybe less so in banking? (as you won't be client-facing early on), but for client-heavy roles like PWM/PB, it is almost a necessity in Miami as the reason these groups exist is to serve Latam clients whom are mostly Spanish-speaking

I lived in Miami for a few years and not knowing Spanish will greatly hold back your career. There are a couple of small boutique IB's (I don't think any of the BB's or larger boutiques/regionals have offices there-at least not IB functions-but I could be wrong) some PE (HIG being the big one), I know there's some traditional AM and a few HF's, and a lot of PWM in multiple forms (outposts of every BB PWM division, RIA's, family offices, etc). But for any PWM you will need fluency in Spanish because most of the money is from Latam. There are also branches/US HQ of nearly every Latam commercial bank but you'll need Spanish for them as well. There are also a lot of insanely wealthy people based there who do interesting deals but that's not something that would be easy to break into out of undergrad. And tons of real estate investment/development opps.

Regardless it will help greatly to advance your career to speak Spanish. I don't, I went there with an established career, but almost everyone speaks Spanish professionally and socially (and most people who live in Miami don't live on SoBe where you hear much more English because of tourists and 20 something transplants who come to party for a few years-most finance/law/business folks will live in Brickell, Downtown, the Grove, Coral Gables, South Miami and I'm probably missing a few hoods) which will make it difficult to build a big network. They all speak English and whenever I'd walk up to a conversation people would switch to English but it's something like 66% of people in Miami speak Spanish in their house as the first language and that's the language they use most of the time.

If really just want South Florida, expand your search up to West Palm and Boca. I don't want to discourage you from Miami because it's a really fun place to live but plan on learning and being fluent in Spanish asap if you want to spend any significant amount of time there.

Can confirm about heavy PWM presence and need to speak Spanish. Only people I know who went to Miami for finance did PWM and were fluent Spanish speakers. Great place to party though.