Top Healthcare Banking Groups

Hey all,

I'm heading to CBS this fall and am looking to enter healthcare banking (currently at a goldman-backed healthcare start-up). Besides number of deals, and total deal size, is there another way through which one can determine good healthcare banking groups?

I have the following groups in mind:
1. Goldman
2. JP Morgan
3. Morgan Stanley
4. Credit Suisse
5. Lazard
6. Jefferies
7. BAML
8. Barcap
9. Greenhill

I'm sure there are other groups that I've left off this list? Any of them come to mind? And how would you rank the groups I've listed?

Thanks again for taking to look at this. Look forward to hearing from you guys!

 

JPM, BAML, and GS are considered tops. I think the general consensus is that JPM is the clear cut #1, but GS is great because it's GS and healthcare is a crazy busy sector, and BAML has been top 3 in league tables for the past 8 years or something. They just poached MS's top European dealmaker (Tom Sheehan) which is pretty big due to all of the dealmaking with healthcare companies going through inversion to re-domicile in Europe for tax purposes.

"You rarely have time for everything you want in this life, so you need to make choices. And hopefully your choices can come from a deep sense of who you are." - Mister Rogers
 

If you're going for a healthcare banking gig, you'll likely recruit extensively for all of the banks you've listed and then some. Your list is pretty good and I imagine that all of these places recruit heavily at CBS. If you shoot for only the GS/MS role (not that you said you were planning on that) odds aren't strong that you'll get it so just keep that in mind and don't shut out any banks. Your ultimate goal for the first year at CBS should be to get a internship anywhere on the street (whether it's your top choice or not). Form there, just get the full time offer and you can always leverage that into a full time offer at another bank during your second year.

Also, I know you said that you were interested in HC because you're currently at a HC based company. Don't let this limit you in what you recruit for. A lot of people think that because they worked at Caterpillar (or whatever) before school that they have to go into an industrials group. This is absolutely not true. If you are generally interested in HC and want to pursue it then that's awesome and you should pursue it. However, if you're doing it because you think that you'll have a leg up on the other applicants, i think that mindset is off. The bankers you recruit with won't necessarily care all that much what your prior work experience is in the terms of your industry expertise, but instead are looking for fit. There are obviously exceptions to this, e.g. I know 2 former doctors who wanted to only do HC groups because of their background, which in those cases I think helped.

Regardless, CBS places well and you'll likely get at least one or two offers. Good luck!

 
Best Response

In M&A, Jefferies crushes it. Cain, Harris Williams, Piper and Blair are also significant players and you'll often see JPM, GS and BAML doing deals in the high hundred millions. On the lower end of the spectrum, Deloitte corporate finance (McColl) has a lot of deals as does Stifel.

In Equity, you got some big names already. Cowen, Leerink, JMP, Canaccord, Roth, Ladenburg, Piper, BMO, RBC come to mind.

 

Thanks guys...I see a lot of recent Follow-On Offerings joint book-running with Cowen, Leerink and Piper? Any another insight on these for healthcare? Whats the reputation? I know Leerink is purely healthcare wonder how strong their reputation is? I think they did the NPS/Shire deal with Goldman couple months ago but I'm not sure

 
kincher0:

Thanks guys...I see a lot of recent Follow-On Offerings joint book-running with Cowen, Leerink and Piper? Any another insight on these for healthcare? Whats the reputation? I know Leerink is purely healthcare wonder how strong their reputation is? I think they did the NPS/Shire deal with Goldman couple months ago but I'm not sure

All good reputations. If they're doing good deals, anyone can make an argument its a good firm.

 

CF has solid research in HC, but I've never seen them do an M&A deal. They'll often get co-manager roles on equity issuances due to their research capabilities, but they have nowhere near the platform of the two you mentioned. I'd view it as a solid career banker spot if you're interested in ECM, but you won't be developing very much at the Analyst level. Their exits to PE are basically non-existent.

 

Take a look at Leerink Swann (they might have rebranded themselves to just Leerink Partners). They're not well known outside of SF, but they have a pretty solid team, and is well-situated in terms of location. There are a lot of bio tech and pharma companies based in the Bay Area (which I found surprising), so you have a lot of opportunities to be exposed to smaller, high-growth type of companies.

http://www.leerink.com/transactions/

--Death, lighter than a feather; duty, heavier than a mountain
 

Straight out of a healthcare banker friends mouth, don't even know what those guys above are talking about:

Top: GS/JPM (both undisputed), then BAML Top Boutiques (literally just google to see the deals they did this year/last year): Centerview (pretty much mainly sell sides), Lazard (haven't seen them on many sell sides at all recently, maybe because they're mainly buyside focused? not sure)

Other top groups/firms: MS (not as consistent as the ones above, at least from what i heard, but MS is still MS), Greenhill (literally one or two big healthcare deals as seen in the past couple years, i believe one london md and one NYC md runs most of their stuff), Evercore (one rainmaker, so can hit big deals, otherwise average outside of that one deal a year - Shire this year)

And thats it. Purely from an Analyst experience/deal flow/reputations perspective (big balance sheet banks will inevitably be on a lot of crap for their financing capabilities). Whats interesting will be to see who's on Pfizer/Allergan and also how CS does in the upcoming years.

 

Started as an analyst a few months back. Can share what I've learned based on the groups I interviewed with and seeing who's been on deals

Top Groups: CV is the hottest name in the space. Been on every mega-deal. Great place to be overall but esp for HC. Team in SF runs HC right now GS/JPM are powerhouses and are always 1 or 2 in league tables. No doubts here. GS does have combined groups (CRHG in NY and WRA in SF) so if you are fixated on HC for whatever reason then tough luck. JPM has dedicated teams Lazard does very well, both their NY team and the group out in SF (Life Sci focused)

Top Second Tier: BAML was the big name in the industry over the past 10 years. They've lost a bunch of ppl but are still a regarded group. I would argue HC is BAML's strongest industry group (only behind M&A/FSG/maybe LevFin). Would slot right below Lazard MS - not their most well-known group but strong brand name and they are on some good deals. Deal flow is iffy Evercore - did Shire, haven't seen them on anything else big recently CS - Have lost people for a couple years, now seem to be bouncing back. Not sure about them

Good groups: Greenhill - mentioned in an earlier post, like Evercore, relies on 1 or 2 big deals. No dedicated team in either NY or SF to the best of my knowledge Barclays - services sector is pretty strong in NY, their SF team is really small Jefferies - old UBS group, does well for themselves. Their best group Guggenheim - gets some hate on this site, but they do very well in the space. Have been improving for the past few years quickly

Okay groups: DB - Capital Markets focused, Med Devices group is very strong Citi - Dedicated teams in NY and SF

Aim for the top two tiers. Other groups listed here are good as well. If not mentioned, I would not recommend.

 

Never have heard BAML referred to as top in healthcare, especially considering the loss of a number of senior MD's throughout the past year. In general, I pay attention to exit opps of former analysts when looking at strength of the group. GS/JPM/Centerview all dominate. The rest are far below and don't warrant a hierarchical ranking.

 

whenever i see a healthcare deal go through recently, seems like Jefferies is in most of them as the advisor or sole-advisor...they do a lot of deals, though i'm not sure that they do the largest healthcare deals out there...

 

The Jefferies healthcare team used to be at UBS (all the rainmakers), and you will notice a lot of people on the healthcare team will be Boston College grads.

I would almost say they are probably the best on the street. They killed at UBS, and now they are killing it at Jefferies.

 

Lorello is viewed as much too "wild and slimy" to advise the corporate giants, hence his practice is much more middle market focused. At the same time I would not doubt one bit if his group brought in more revenue than any other HC group on the street. Even if not the highest revenue, I know for a fact he had the highest revenue per head of any group at UBS for essentially every year he was there.

Lorello has a number of good MD's working for him and although a dominant personality it is not like he is the only one bringing in deals.

He is a miserable person to work for, but if you do well and are good, there is not a guy on the street who gets his MD's paid better on a consistent basis.

 

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