Best Groups at BBs, Best Banks for certain Groups Ranking
Just wondering about street perception on ranking the bulge brackets/elite boutiques across the major industry and product groups:
(As in which firms have the strongest groups for some of these)
M&A
Equity
Debt
Healthcare
TMT
Industrials
Consumer/Retail
Energy
Real Estate
LevFin
Financial Sponsors
FIG
My perception has always been that there's a lot of variation, with some groups considerably stronger or weaker at certain banks (even at the BBs), so I think it might be helpful for people weighing offers, trying to pick groups strategically, or looking to get into a particular industry/product and want a strong group.
Also which groups do you think are strongest (relative to the other banks, not in terms of which groups get the best deal flow, etc) at each of the BBs?
M&A - Morgan Stanley
Debt - Citi, Bank of America Merrill Lynch
Healthcare - JP Morgan
TMT - Goldman Sachs
Industrials - Citi
Consumer/Retail - GS, MS, Barclays
LevFin - BAML Natural Resources - Barclays
Power & Utilities - Barclays
Jefferies takes the cake for natural resources
To add a few more names:
M&A - Morgan Stanley, GS, JPM
Debt - Citi, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, JPM
Healthcare - JP Morgan, GS, MS
TMT - Goldman Sachs, MS, JPM, BAML, Qatalyst
Industrials - Citi, GS
Consumer/Retail - GS, Lazard, BAML, Centerview, JPM, Barclays
LevFin - BAML, JPM, CS
Natural Resources - MS, Barclays, GS, Citi, BAML
Power & Utilities - Barclays, Citi, GS
Generally, MS and GS are always at least top 3; and JPM/Citi/BAML are usually in the top 5/6 for every industry.
Here's a post I made earlier this year
Both Barclays and CS have great Sponsors groups. BAML is up there as well.
GS FIG is strong too
GS FIG is unquestionably the best. JPM FIG really doesn't compete for the major deals. Would say that top three for FIG in order would be: GS, Lazard, JPM.
Putting league tables aside, CS Sponsors is excellent from a skillset development standpoint because they do both standard coverage group work (re M&A) as well as Leveraged Finance work (negotiating commitment papers). At BBs, usually groups are one or the other - if you're in M&A you won't know as much about debt and if you're in LevFin, you miss out on the intricate modeling experience that you only get in a coverage group (i.e. building a Company's operating model and actually putting thought into it vs. just hard coding in whatever revenue/EBITDA figures are given on the CIM to spit out a debt repayment % for leveraged lending guidelines)
CS Sponsors is one of the rare groups that combines both skillsets, making it essentially the perfect group to prep you for PE recruiting. This is what makes the group such a powerful platform from a junior experience standpoint. Of course the fact that CS is also one of the most aggressive LBO financing banks out there also helps
By the way just so you know, LF&OR only deals with corporate issuers, not sponsor backed stuff (that will all be run by the financial sponsors group). So think large corporate frequent HY issuers like American Airlines, T-Mobile, Digital Globe, Hertz, Valeant, and in Europe, clients like Altice, Liberty Global, those kind of issuers. You do all the modeling and all that but given 80% of your work is just on refinancings / repricings (almost no acquisition financings), I've heard from a number of peers that it gets quite dull
HL, PJT, Lazard, Moelis