Banks that “favor their own” vs. banks that “prefer outsiders”

I am currently at a BB that will easily pass over top-tier external candidates in the interest of promoting an “insider,” or even granting their request to switch divisions internally (I.e. from research to IB).

I have a friend at an MM whose bank does the opposite, and who complains to me that his bank will credit a new hire with two years of experience at a “better bank” with 4+ years of “experience” as far as their incoming rank is concerned.

I suppose it is a trade-off between obtaining labour as inexpensively as possible (internal promotion/switches) vs. acquiring prestige “inorganically” (poaching).

Would you say that your bank does more of the former, or more of the latter?

15 Comments
 

Almost every bank except MS, GS, and JPM favors outsiders. EBs are super egregious at this, as the whole business model is leaner, deal teams mean rainmakers from full-service banks move over for higher pay. The biggest example, however, is Jefferies: they essentially never promote internally as a business choice. Pros and cons of both strategies and the MS/GS/JPM approach only really works because they have such a strong brand name. 

 

Senior VP in CorpDev:

Almost every bank except MS, GS, and JPM favors outsiders. EBs are super egregious at this, as the whole business model is leaner, deal teams mean rainmakers from full-service banks move over for higher pay. The biggest example, however, is Jefferies: they essentially never promote internally as a business choice. Pros and cons of both strategies and the MS/GS/JPM approach only really works because they have such a strong brand name. 


Only group that’s an exception at Jefferies is the Energy team.

They have almost never hired at the senior level externally(outside of when they have had to establish a practice- such as when the original midstream team joined or more recently the ET team)

 

makes sense and looks like it's worked --- they're one of the top energy groups aren't they

 

Wouldn't say EBs are egregious at this. Yes they hire externals but they're growing multiples of what GS/MS/JPM are so they need to to sustain that growth .

E.g. in last decade Evercore went from 0.7bn to 2.4bn and PJT 0.3bn to 1.3bn in annual advisory fees whilst MS went from 1.6bn to 2.3bn. It's going to require some external hiring to grow at that rate as you can't produce enough internal talent

 

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