Are Elite Botiques Percieved the Same as Botique Consulting Firms
Are companies like Evercore and Lazard more/less/or equally respected in the finance field as boutique consulting firms like Kearney and LEK are respected in the consulting field?
You're trying to compare two things that really aren't comparable, as the BB vs EB split in banking isn't really the same thing as MBB vs T2. All of those four firms are highly respected and widely known so you'd be fine at any of them
Also, in what world are LEK and Kearney boutiques? The former has 1.5K+ employees with 20+ offices and the latter has 3.5K+ employees and 60+ offices...
So do Lazard and Evercore
I wouldn't see those as boutiques either given their size even though many on this website do. It's also a different benchmark of sorts. In IB you have numerous BB and MMs which are huge. In consulting you have MBBs and T2s. The size of Big 4 consulting departments is not as big as MMs for comparison. EBs of IB vs EBs of MC would be more along the lines of CVP and PJT vs Mars & Co, Marakon and Kaiser Associates - this makes more sense as far as comparisons go.
If MBBs are the top BBs (MS, GS and JPM) and Big 4 are the notable MM players, T2s like LEK, OW, RB and ATK are more along the lines of the remaining BBs than the "EBs" you mentioned.
What makes a consulting firm a boutique is either a narrow focus on industry (TMT/O&G, etc.) or services offered (M&A, ops, etc). ATK and LEK fit neither one of those buckets, they are too big.
Not necessarily. Clearly a boutique won't offer the same service as MBBs but companies like Kaiser Associates, Mars & Co and Marakon all play in multiple industries. Some do fit the description (e.g. Altman Vilandrie & Co in TMT and ClearView Partners in HC), but others don't (e.g. LEK is technically a generalist, but their bread and butter is in life sciences and CDDs).
No, not at all.
They’re all amazing opportunities but I do think it’s different. Regardless of how you fall in the above comments on whether the consulting firms are “boutiques,” the big difference is in who they compete with. Evercore would routinely beat top BB banks. You don’t see Kearney beating McKinsey all else being equal.
I think there are a select list of boutiques who do compete with MBB, mostly more specialized ones like Clearview, Altman Solon, and Putnam Associates. Looking at linkedin the people are mostly from top targets. at my target, a decent amount of people choose those over firms like LEK and Oliver Wyman, and people view them as way better than B4 I think cause of pay and the talent. I know that some of these boutiques also pay significantly more than LEK and slightly more than OW. it seems like all the kids at my school at the really top boutiques and OW/LEK have pretty high GPAs in legit majors
No.. Companies like Evercore, PJT, Centerview & Lazard are significantly more respected in finance than boutique consulting firms are in their respective consulting world. You will often find people respect Evercore and PJT more than traditional bulge bracket banks like Goldman, Morgan Stanley, Citi and the likes. You will also often find people choosing Evercore/PJT/Centerview over GS/JPM/MS (and most definitely over BofA, Citi, Barclays and other BB banks). But you will almost never find people choose boutique consulting firms like Kearney/LEK over McKinsey/Bain.
Banks like Evercore aren't "boutique" in the sense that Kearney are in consulting. Evercore and Lazard are rather huge global independent advisory banks on global scale that differ in their operating model, where they don't use their balance sheet to win mandates (i.e. offer debt financing) or have a sales & trading arm or have commercial retail arms. Evr/Laz only focus on the advisory side of business like M&A and Restructuring. If anything, the bulge bracket JPM/Citi/BofA business model is more similar to the Big4 (PwC/EY/KPMG/Deloitte) model in that they all provide end-to-end services (like how PwC offers everything strategy, operations, project management to tax advisory).
If you want more fair comparisons: Boutique consulting firms (i.e. actually small) banks like Allen & Co, Oppenheimer and MTS Partners or MM banks that focus heavily on a few sectors more comparable to Kearney/ LEK
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