Best Coverage Groups at Barclays & Group Networking

Hey all: Thanks in advance for your help. I'll be working at Barclays IB in the summer of 2019 and was wondering which coverage group are most highly regarded. Are there any specific groups you all would recommend? Also hoping for some general advice on group networking & selection.

 
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I assume this is for the US, not London? Good thing about Barclays is that pretty much all the groups get looks in terms of buyside recruiting so my honest advice is that you pick a group based on what coverage sector you are most interested in. With that said if I had to speak strictly in terms of placement, I would recommend the following (in no particular order):

1.) Natural Resources (Houston / NY)

From a pure coverage standpoint, Natural Resources is probably the strongest group at Barclays with a close 2nd place from P&U and Healthcare - yes a number of big hitters have left (Skip Mcgee, Greg Pipkin) but the group was able to hold on to the vast majority of their accounts and embodies one of those groups that to this day, still truly plays the "trusted advisor" role to CEOs etc, instead of being just a run of the mill BB bank that corporates only call upon when they need financing. I don't have many personal friends here so I can't speak for the inner workings, other than that this group truly gets their cream of the crop - if you are an incoming FT analyst going through FT group placement (for the NY office), you will notice that this group tends to be quite picky on schools (they mainly target kids with ivy league backgrounds, mainly HYPW to be specific) and is probably the only coverage group within Barclays that is able to handpick kids in such a manner. From 2nd hand sources, I've heard that vast majority of Oil & Gas deals are run out of Houston so those guys get better experience but the handful of NY NatRes analysts all placed very well, so don't think it has that much of an impact in terms of recruiting. With that said, note that NatRes (specifically oil and gas) is very technical and is a somewhat niche sector so make sure you really enjoy the space (or don't mind spending 70-80 hours a week delving down on) - I've seen many summer analysts who interned in NatRes then switched out to a different sector group (i.e. TMT) as they realized they are just not interested in oil & gas companies despite it being a "top group" and I think that is something worth considering before blindly gunning for this group

2.) Power & Utilities

Very fratty group and probably places the best (alongside NatRes) out of all the groups at Barclays - historically and currently one of the best groups at Barclays and across the Street in general. One of the forte's of this group is that you are staffed directly to a set of clients so you really "own" the clients you are assigned and get to understand them inside out - this is different from a standard coverage group staffing where you are randomly staffed into whatever projects pop up in the pipeline (which you typically don't get much say as a 1st year analyst). This coupled with the high technical complexity of the operating models in the P&U sector, plus very strong dealflow and it's not surprising analysts here places lights out. The only main drawback I've heard from friends here was that the group is extremely "fratty" so they warned that it's important to make sure you fit in culturally with the group. Not completely sure what he meant by that but that but take it for what it's worth

3.) Financial Sponsors (NY / LA)

If you want a pure play generalist experience, this is the group to gun for. Ever since Jes took over as CEO, Barclays has been targeting Sponsors ferociously and now it's come to a point where Barclays rarely misses out on any LBO financing activity (barring KKR in recent times due to the Jes family conflict, although KKR's stance has softened significantly lately) and this group bears most of the fruit of all the incoming LBO activity (the firmwide LBO model in the US was designed by the Sponsors group just to prove a point on this end). If you're aiming generalist PE and don't want to be niche'd up in P&U and NatRes, I would recommend the Sponsors group above all. With that said, group is very, very hard to get in to, not just because it's popular but because the group takes in the least amount of analysts out of all the coverage groups, from a pure numbers perspective.

Regarding the LA sponsors group - if you want to stay in LA I would put Barclays LA Sponsors in a top 3 category (alongside Moelis LA and CS LA) from a pure experience standpoint. The 2 guys who run the group here (Ted Iantuono and James Meehan) are both ex-CS LA and are terrific, and bring in heavy LBO dealflow from all the West Coast funds (Ares, Leonard Green, Plat Equity, Marlin, Golden Gate, Silver Lake) and likewise their analysts place lights out.

4.) Tech (NY / Menlo Park)

Barclays' Tech coverage is all about buyside LBO financing which Barclays does a TON of, heck even their Head of Global Capital Markets (JF Astier) was a Tech LevFin person originally. Not as much sellside mandates compared to say GS / MS / Qatalyst but let's be honest, sell-side mandates aren't as fun as buyside LBO mandates, which is the actual experience you're looking for anyway if you're gunning PE exit ops.

Note that I specifically said Tech and not M&T (Barclays separates the 2 groups) which is still a very strong group (especially so in telecom, not as strong in media) although a lot of the dealflow for M&T is capital markets based (hello IG / HY bond refinancings) which gets quite dull. With that said, be prepared to work VERY long hours in Tech whereas M&T is (relatively) more chill in that regard

Post ended up way longer than I'd expected so I'll stop here but I do have pretty good insight into the other groups at Barclays as well (Leveraged Finance, Healthcare, Industrials, Consumer Retail, Real Estate, FIG) - maybe for another day then

Hope you find the above useful

Array
 

This is a great post. In regards to LA, Barclays is definitely one of the top places to be - Ted and James are incredibly well-respected in the Sponsors community. They also added a Consumer Retail MD, who covers all of the major West Coast clients. From what I've heard, Analysts and Associates work across both the Financial Sponsors and Consumer Retail groups, which are both top groups within the firm.

Hope this is helpful.

 

Thanks so much for taking the time to post this. Really appreciate it. Interested in hearing your take on deal flow for Tech in NY, considering the existence of the Menlo office. Also any advice for group networking and gaining placement in a top group would be really appreciated. Thanks again.

 

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