2021 INVESTMENT BANKING PRESTIGE RANKINGS - OFFICIAL

It's about that time of the year to get the rankings going. Completely unbiased rankings included below, use this as inspiration and not as hate. 

1.a. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Evercore, Centerview, Moelis

1.b. JPM, Citi, BAML, Lazard, PJT

------------------------ PE MEGAFUND CUTOFF, Women Dream of Knowing You------------------------ 

2.a. Credit Suisse, Barclays, Guggenheim, Rothschild, PWPGreenhill

2.b. RBC, Deutsche, UBS, Jefferies, William Blair

3.a. Wells Fargo, Macquarie, BMO, Mizuho, Houlihan, Harris Williams, Baird

------------------------ MM PE CUTOFF, Don't Even think about exit opps below here, Within Reach of Women, but gotta work for it------------------

3.b. US Bank, Nomura, BNP, Sagent, Marathon

------------------------ You're better off in your mom's basement, Women Forgot you exist------------------------

4.a. Big 4 corp fin, Truist, Stifel, Lincoln International

If you have an issue, feel free to dispute.

39 Comments
 

Worth noting that based on the above link, Barcap crushed Americas M&A in 2019: if you filter for M&A, Last year 2019, and select fees (instead of deal value, getting at what others have said about financing vs actual advisory), Barcap ranks #7. Now also take into account that 69% of Barcap's fees came from Americas whereas for Citi that was only 55% (don't think any of us give a **** about Europe), and Barcap was virtually tied with Citi for #5 (Lazard also had outsized Europe presence). 

However, 2020 was a whole different ballgame--looks like Barcap underperformed + boutiques with strong RX franchises (Lazard, EVR, Centerview, HL) outperformed big time and Barcap got pushed  out of the Top 10. Meanwhile, Citi's M&A fees remained constant and the share attributed to Americas rose from 55% to 66%. Blew Barcap out of the water.

Neither came too close to BofA in 2019 or 2020.

As others have said, league tables also do not correlate directly to PE placement--general wisdom is all 3 have strong groups and send kids to plenty of MFs and UMMs every year (the "MF cutoff" above is absurd--most of "tier 2a" sends at least 2-3 to MF each year).

Curious to see how Q12021 fared given how burnt out everyone is.

 

How tf is Barclays better than Citi? The meatsucking for Barclays has gotten way out of hand on this site. Screened for M&A and specifically financial advisory in US only, these are the rankings of transaction value for the BBs in the last 3 yrs. Citi's financial advisory transaction value is 85 billion higher than Barclays... congrats on the Barclays offer tho 

 

The placement of RBC here is pretty weird. JEF/Blair/Baird are all better if we’re looking at exits tbh.

 

Is JPM really that bad? In Europe they are consistenly among the Top 3.
-> is there such a big difference between US and Europe?

 

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Career Advancement Opportunities

September 2026 Investment Banking

  • Evercore 01 99.5%
  • Moelis & Company 01 98.9%
  • JPMorgan 01 98.4%
  • Goldman Sachs 01 97.8%
  • Morgan Stanley 07 97.3%

Overall Employee Satisfaction

September 2026 Investment Banking

  • Moelis & Company No 99.5%
  • Morgan Stanley 02 98.9%
  • Evercore 01 98.4%
  • Banco Santander 02 97.8%
  • BMO Capital Markets 12 97.3%

Professional Growth Opportunities

September 2026 Investment Banking

  • Evercore 01 99.5%
  • Moelis & Company 01 98.9%
  • Morgan Stanley 07 98.4%
  • Goldman Sachs 01 97.8%
  • JPMorgan No 97.3%

Total Avg Compensation

September 2026 Investment Banking

  • Vice President (16) $429
  • Associates (51) $260
  • 3rd+ Year Analyst (8) $210
  • 2nd Year Analyst (26) $182
  • Intern/Summer Associate (14) $159
  • 1st Year Analyst (84) $151
  • Intern/Summer Analyst (76) $101
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