Middle Market Rising?

I think definitely places like Lazard will and are becoming more attractive places to work, prestige-wise. Both Lazard and HL have been hiring like mad in the past few weeks/month, Lazard has been adding to its TMT and Healthcare practice at the analyst level for sure. HL has been adding alot to both FAS and Restructuring, but this may be tapering off. Greenhill has been looking aggressively for junior level employees. It makes sense, as alot of deal flow is going to go towards these guys; also, oftentimes these are better places to work, in terms of team size, structure, etc., so I'm actually glad that the "boutiques"/mid-markets/etc are getting more attention now.
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I agree

What are the exit opps like for a MM like HL? Is it a better place to be compared to other MM firms in terms of exits lateral opps etc?

i wouldnt classify lazard and greenhill as middle market. they may be smaller than BB's, but there is nothing small about their deals. true, they may dip into the MM, but it just seems odd to classify them as that.

when i think of mm, i think of Houlihan, Jefferies, Harris Williams, Blair, etc. cant speak about all of them, but many of these banks are doing quite well. dealflow is good in the middle market, as it is much more resilient.
anytime a firm is hiring, rather than firing, it is a good sign, and these firms are actively looking to pick up talent.

in terms of jimbo's question, exit opps are very good, depending on the bank. obviously, if you come from one of the top MM banks, mentioned above, you will have solid opportunities to get into PE. few guys i know from Blair are at Paine, Code Hennessey, CIVC, and many other very good and solid PE shops. same goes for HW, they have excellent placement into PE.

Sigh.. you guys are so dumb. When there's going to be a $100bn deal, do you really think the company is going to ask a clown such as HL to advise? No; it's going ask Goldman/Morgan/JPM/etc., as it always has. The difference between now and a year ago isn't that suddenly the BB banks lost all their advisory powers - its that there are no huge deals on which to advise. Get a f*cking clue... seriously. A bank such as HL/Jefferies ever equaling the likes of GS? Give me a break.

LOL. Kind of true. I worked at ML for good while and then worked at one of the smaller banks you mentioned (did it for location, thought it'd be easier to rise, etc...). The use of the word "clown" really gave me a good chuckle; hence I decided to chime in. Hardly any of the associates at the smaller shop had heard of the treasury stock method and the modeling skills of the analysts could have stood to use some polishing.

how are the canadian banks faring in this mix

like rbc and bmo?

bmo interviewed here...i wouldn't mentions them amongst the major players in the middle market...while they seemed very proud of their middle market status and the lack of loss in the current market, their personnel didn't seem quite as impressive as the harris williams, lazard mm, hlhz, etc.