A Warning on the Wells Fargo Securities Investment Banking Summer Analyst Program
As a former "investment banking" summer analyst at Wells Fargo Securities a couple years ago, I wanted to give all of y'all a heads up before you sign an offer.
wells fargo investment banking overview
The way that Wells did group placement was pretty ass back in my day (and I'm pretty sure they haven't changed it).
Well Fargo Investments Placement Process
In terms of group placement after signing the offer, Wells combines their normal IBD groups (coverage, M&A, Sponsors, etc.), their capital markets groups (LevFin, DCM, ECM, Syndications), public finance, and their asset backed finance (structured finance/lending) groups into the same "investment banking" recruiting pipeline.
Wells Fargo NYC is Not Guaranteed
The real kicker is how Wells does location. Instead of applying, interviewing, and getting an offer for a specific city like every other bank in the world, **Wells places you into a city AFTER you sign the offer**. And what they don't tell you until you find out for yourselves is that around 70%+ of positions are in Charlotte, not New York City or San Francisco.
And while there is a group matching process, HR plays a heavy role and almost everyone preferences normal IBD groups in NYC, SF, or LA as their top choice so you can imagine how much of a shitshow that becomes. So after you sign the offer, there's a very likely (in fact more than likely) chance that you could get placed in something like syndicated finance or asset backed finance in Charlotte, especially with returning sophomore diversity interns taking up a lot of the NYC/SF spots before group placement for junior interns even begins.
There is the possibility of switching groups between your SA and FT stint, however there tend to be very few or no spots in NYC or SF FT and everyone in Charlotte tries to switch out of cities so people successfully doing it are few and far between.
Review of Investment Banking Internship
There's a reason they do recruiting this way since they can't get a whole lot of good talent to come to Charlotte or work in their shitter groups without being super bait and switchy. I mean it is Wells Fargo, you shouldn't be surprised at this point if they're doing shady shit.
So unless you're super open to the idea of ending up working in Charlotte and syndicating loans or lending against mortgages despite signing an "investment banking" offer letter, I'd strongly encourage you to go through the recruiting process at other banks before locking yourself into Wells too early.
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Sounds like an excellent opportunity for desperate monkeys to get a food inside the IB door. Rent is cheaper, there's less competition, and how bad can Charlotte be? Sure, the job may be lackluster, but at least you can use this internship as a leverage for something better, come next year. (But I agree, bait and switch sucks, especially when it's this severe)
Charlotte is without a doubt a worse city in terms of career development opportunities and for most people, arguably a worse city in terms of recreational activities as well. The entire downtown area is like 5x5 blocks.
You could certainly do a lot worse than Wells Charlotte, but they really are incredibly bait and switchy. I just wanted to give a heads up to people before they signed with Wells to at least play the field with other banks first cause there's a pretty significant potential downside case when you sign with WF.
And a massively better city in terms of quality of life. For the cost of a 1-bedroom in NYC you can be living in a house riding a BMW to work in Charlotte.......typically working a lot fewer weekend hours than NYC bankers.
If you want to be in IBD long term and aren't looking for PE or other prestige exit opportunities it's probably better to build a career in mid-market in a tier 2 city. Sure you'll miss out on living in "the big apple", but the overall lifestyle is massively better and you'll probably have significantly more take home income due to lower taxes and cost of life.
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If its not a bait and switch, then why don't they just have separate applications for each city like every other bank in the world? And why do they group stuff like public finance, securization, and syndications (which obviously has much fewer people interested in it and most other banks recruit separately for) into the same recruiting pipeline as IBD? Neither JPM nor Barclays nor to the best of my knowledge any other bank in the world group their securitization groups into their IBD recruiting process.
It's a moot point to say that you anecdotally know people in coverage groups at WF Charlotte, cause I also anecdotally know plenty of unhappy people who were placed into groups like syndications and asset backed finance. In fact, the biggest group, and the one you have the highest chance to get placed in, is their asset backed finance group in Charlotte.
And from the people in Wells IBD Charlotte that I've stayed in touch with from my internship, PE or any type of buyside recruiting is significantly more challenging in Charlotte. There are simply a lot less opportunities in the South than there are in NYC, Boston, SF, Chicago, etc. A couple of them ended up lateraling away to better banks in NYC to do PE recruiting since they found it too challenging to do it at Wells Charlotte.
Looking at your post history too, you haven't even graduated college yet and clearly have never been through the PE associate recruiting process.
Having gone through the WF process many years ago, I can agree that most of what the original post says is true. However, I would caveat that with the fact that the post is definitely written with a negative connotation from what sounds like someone who got burned in the process. If you are interviewing for WF and are not at least somewhat aware that you may end up in Charlotte, you should probably drop out of the process. While it is possible to end up in NYC, the vast majority of WF jobs are in Charlotte (including their M&A group). Again, I agree with many of the ideas pointed out about the recruiting process, but take it with a grain of salt as there are many people that viewed their process positively.
When Wells Fargo had a gun put to its head to "merge" with Wachovica, part of the deal was moving Wells Fargo Securities to Charlotte to take up floors in the Duke Energy Center (which Wells is now the proud owner of) which was originally intended to be Wachovias new fancy headquarters. Obviously when that happened, former gigs that were once in SF and NYC are now in Charlotte.
Sleekerman's grievances hold truth, and is a good PSA. If you are going to recruit with Wells realize that Charlotte is the hub.
I have no dog in this fight but the OP is 100% right.
Also I don't think he's saying everyone should avoid WF like the plague, but OP is providing a warning to those who may be elated at having an "IBD" offer but not realizing the downsides vs. other IBD offers.
It's akin to having UBS kick IBD people into ops back in 2009, but having this be a common practice today where half the class goes into ops. I'm pretty sure you would want someone to warn you about your offer in this scenario, no?
Wells Fargo... Charlotte...
I have spent more than a year in Charlotte working for a company investing in undervalued assets and counted days till the moment when I'd be able to move back to New York. Putting aside the fact that it's the South (i.e. everything is veeeery slow), there is literally nothing to do in the whole area neither at night nor during the day. Why would you work 80+ hours making money you have nothing to spend on? The only bright side of Charlotte is the airport: conveniently located and with direct connections to the major US cities (international flights suck, though).
Uhhh, Wells Fargo is huge in Charlotte. If you didn't know that before signing up for Wells--lol at you.
Also, Charlotte is probably the 2nd largest(but distant) financial center in country. BAML is there, as it's hub.
Charlotte is a fine city. I've lived there, ideally not a place that I would "love" to live again but no real complaints. Cool city.
Not everyone in the world is from Charlotte or the south so I don't know how you expect people to magically know Wells is huge in Charlotte. WFS also does their recruiting nationwide, and when I went through the recruitment process at Wells, they would deliberately mislead you. I went to a target school in the northeast (also grew up in the northeast) so naturally everyone wanted NYC. During on-campus info sessions and chats with alum, they would significantly downplay your odds of getting placed in Charlotte (nobody ever mentioned that 70%+ of headcount was in Charlotte), and you would get repeatedly assured that if you're from the northeast you would get placed in NYC with no problem if you wanted. However, as it turned out, a significant chunk of the people placed in Charlotte were people who went to school in the northeast and/or from the NYC area, and a lot of people ended up bitter and disillusioned.
Charlotte is the 2nd largest "banking" city in the US because of all the BO and MO stuff that BofA and Wells has there. In terms of IBD, Wells is pretty much the only player. From what I've heard, BAML has and is continuing to unwind down their LevFin group in Charlotte, and besides that all you have are tiny satellite offices of a few MM banks. In terms of opportunities in "investment banking", there are very little outside of Wells despite being the "2nd largest banking city" in the US. And in terms of buyside opportunities, there's even less.
And while you might love Charlotte and there's nothing wrong with that, it's undeniably a dick move for Wells to bait and switch people into working there.
Some Southern douchie keeps minusing the posts that criticize WF and Charlotte. At least, we know who voted for the current president.
Did you read the post?
"Not everyone in the world is from Charlotte or the south so I don't know how you expect people to magically know Wells is huge in Charlotte."
Dude, if you're signing up for a gig in finance and you are applying to a relatively prestigious bank, you should know some of the largest locations. You don't need to be from Charlotte to know that, you need to know finance in general. Get your head in the game.
It's like signing up for energy trading blindly location-wise and being told you're going to be based in Calgary(. That shit's real. Calgary is a big hub for that. Then complaining, oh man I didn't know Calgary was a hub. I'm not from Calgary, how would I know. No, dumbo, you signed up for energy trading in a location blindly this is a part of the gig.
As for your last point, I don't love Charlotte. I wouldn't be so thrilled to move back, but would for a good opportunity. But yes, I do agree, it's a dirty move for bait & switch. Absolutely dirty move. And not just cause it's Charlotte vs. New York, but what if you're family is in New York, etc. There's other stuff to it besides job liquidity. You always gotta let people know where they may end up cause that's make it or rbreak it for them. There's no good business practice like that.
I think the post is useful information for prospective monkeys but agree that the tone is negative.
Honestly this is all part of doing your due diligence on any firm you apply for. I've never worked at Wells but it was always common knowledge that most of the company's IB opportunities are based in Charlotte rather than NYC. A simple LinkedIn search will also reveal as much.
I think each bank treats its IBD pipeline and the various functions it feeds into differently and you have to do your due diligence prior to accepting an offer. Certain functions are considered "IBD" at different banks. For instance, from those in my network that have gone through the SunTrust process, I can share that the bank also lumps in certain asset securitization groups with IBD in addition to leveraged credit underwriting (group called Acquisition Finance) which is effectively doing 4-5x debt/EBITDA deals in the bank market (not to be confused with Lev Fin) whereas groups like these typically fall within credit/corporate banking at other shops.
Pretty sure OP Has never even been to Charlotte, do you understand how much better your QoL will be there versus NYC? Sure they are bait and switchy but I have seen the same thing with multiple colleagues at Goldman and other major IB’s with BSC’s in places like Utah, Charlotte, etc etc
I lived 10 weeks in Charlotte as part of the internship and hated every second of it. It might be livable if you're from the South or lived all your life in a dinky small town, but if you're from the Northeast and grew up in cities like New York or Boston, Charlotte will simply suck in comparison. It's especially terrible when you're young as there's only like 5 "hip" bars/clubs in the uptown area and odds are you'll run into the same people at Wells or BofA there every weekend. The CoL is obviously higher in other finance hub cities, but I'd take that trade-off any day rather than waste away my 20s living in Charlotte.
Also, other banks like Goldman do recruit for offices in random location like Salt Lake City but almost everyone else specifically recruits for those locations so you know what you're getting yourself into instead of what Wells is doing by dangling the prospects of a NYC placement in front of you and then shipping you off to Charlotte after you've signed your offer.
The arrogance of you Northerneasterners is astounding. Did you ever consider that living in a tiny old crammed studio apartment paying $4k+ a month just so you can experience "the most hip nightlife ever" isn't the universal American dream? To me, "wasting away my 20's" is spending all my money on rent, food, and alcohol in a hyper-materialistic superficial bubble full of sociopathic behavior.