Barclays vs Gugg vs Greenhill

Prospects and interns overthink about the exit. Ultimately IB is a 2 year training program for gaining the actual finance skills you would use in PE and whatever later career path. Greenhill simply doesn't have deal flow, which means you will be severely behind and won't really get to understand how deals function from the sell-side. You will get deal experience in a good group at Barclays or Gugg, that's the real difference. Also, I think Barc still has better exits than GHL, but GHL is def more supportive of exits. It's more hush-hush at Barclays, and I'd argue that GHL naturally attracts more hardos than Barclays (probably true for the EB vs BB though generally), but still IMO a relevant point in terms of viewing exits as ultimately exits are a reflection of your analyst class and heavily influenced by how much your analysts want to exit (hardos are typically more prepared and have an easier ramp up process, which helps a lot when recruiting happens mostly in your first year). GHL, in particular, basically attracts no lifetime bankers as that group often looks for pure deal flow, which GHL doesn't have, whilst they are attracted to the BBs generally speaking due to their ability to learn across products. I am somehow who wants to be a lifetime banker (at least for now) and that's the general thoughts of many others going for a similar thing. Note: Am not at any of these 3 firms, but I am at another BB.

How is deal experience at Barc given there is in-house modelling? Does this truly make a difference in deal experience compared to other BBs that just pass it off to the M&A team?

Analyst 1 in IB-M&A

Caveating that top groups at Barc exit equally or better than GHL. Barc's top groups get on-cycle as well as off-cycle MF attention, and GHL remains a shit-tier bank in terms of actual deal flow. IB is also about experience and you aren't getting live deal experiences at GHL because well nobody is lol. That bank has absolutely gone in the shitter and is only somehow getting shittier and shittier. Exits might also have gotten worse now because it's under Mizuho, GHL is like clearly the worst here overall, and might not be better than Gugg in exits for long (already worse than Barc top groups like HC, Sponsors, or PU&I that regularly get and have MF exits).

Greenhill by far has better exits than Barclays on a per capita basis lol - source: close friend in analyst 1 class that just started. Don’t spread misinformation (Barclays shitty culture, just go gugg or GHL lol)

GHL is not that same what it was in the 2010s but exits wise it's still better than Barclays considering their large class size. You could argue that P&U or HC teams have MF/UMM level exits, but other than that Barclays has a pretty mediocre and volatile exit track record