Best FSG & FIG teams on the street ?

It seemed MS FSG was always regarded highly, Sandler O’Neil pre-acquisition was good for FIG, and more recently Lazard, JPM, BAML and Citi after they got the FSG heads from CS, but wondering which FSG & FIG are thought of as the best.

29 Comments
 

for sponsors, any view is purely subjective / anecdotal. The goal of the team is really to maximize their wallet share within the sponsors they cover, while minimizing the amount they need to lend to them to support that wallet share. 

Everyone will have their own cut or metrics as to how they are the best and there are too many variables to properly analyze from the outside looking in

 

UBS retained very few sponsor bankers from CS, there were senior sponsor bankers that came in from Barclays but it was significantly fewer in numbers than other groups. UBS FIG also isn't top 2, but they are clearly a strong group overall with quite a few large mega-cap deals recently like the Aon and Triust. UBS FSG is in a weird spot since FSG/LevFin were combined until this year and UBS has historically been a sponsors-driven bank where that combined LevFin/Sponsors group was traditionally viewed as the best group in the bank(some of the M&A kids think otherwise, but exits wise LevFin/Sponsors was materially better). UBS FSG is still a fine group and will predictably continue to see at least some deal flow as almost all of UBS M&A activity is sponsors-based, but nowhere near first on the street.

 

These aren't the best banks for sponsor deal flow, but they are good sponsor groups to be in for exits given the firm level: UBS/Barclays/DB/BAML. I think there is some confusion as to what is being evaluated for and to clarify, these groups are good for the analyst experience b/c of modeling, relatively good WLB, and relatively good exits(given firm). For example, at DB and UBS sponsors are a top 3 group at worst and arguably 1st(if you don't want to do RE at DB and if you don't want to do LevFin at UBS).

 

JPM and BAML M&A groups are stronger and at UBS FSG is stronger seems to be the general consensus. I know for a fact that's true for BAML, but not 100% on JPM or UBS.

 
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I would agree except I would move BofA to the end and move both Citi and UBS up. Those 3 are roughly in a similar tier of having some good/big deals but not being on most, however, BofA is the only one that has killed an associate b/c of terrible WLB, and the difference between BofA and the other two isn't that significant. Citi still remains above UBS as it is a better FIG group.

 

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