Are there "chill" M&A banks in London?

Curious to hear as most of my intel is from absolutely horrendous sweatshops (i.e., MS), but are there any M&A advisory houses with decent pay, but rather chill/laid-back culture without any weekend work? 

I know this is like finding a needle haystack but could you please evaluate a bit on what you gathered from your friends? I also don't mind not going to a BB and rather downmarket, just don't want to work weekends and this always on / anxious / stress type of environment.

4 Comments
 

The nature of M&A is you are on live execution, hence there will always be weekend work by definition

 

'Majority' is wrong - BNP, Mizuho, Scotia all have better WLB but that's pretty much it. And that's because none of them are good at / offer M&A. Santander is sweaty (and even then not that strong) 

Vast majority of MM bank is a sweatshop (Houlihan, RJ, HW, Baird, WB, DC Advisory, Jeff, Guggenheim, etc etc list goes on)

best chance at WLB is a non-M&A bank with non-US/UK roots 

 

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