Best groups at Wells Fargo IBD 2023?
I got an offer recently for summer 2024. I am wondering which groups are best for the IBD. I know the bank is growing the IBD so im excited to see which groups are expected to perform well in the coming years. I heard REGAL is best but Ive heard that doing REGAL pigeonholes you in regard to exit opportunities. I heard DCM and Leveraged Finance are also good, I would be interested. What industry groups are good? Also, kind of a side question, but how do you guys even find out what groups are good? Is it more just hearing around or do you look at league tables mostly? Thank you in advance.
Currently at WF, if you’re prioritizing exits and you want more than LMM/relatively unknown MM PE it’s pretty much REGAL or get a group you’re interested in and then try to recruit for FT/lateral elsewhere. None of the non-REGAL groups currently exit to anything other than middling corp dev, LMM/regional MM PE, or laterals and that includes the groups people on here cite as “strong” like Industrials, Sponsors, and FIG. If you’re trying to get paid street and work like 60-70 hrs a week with decent people tho, it’s a pretty sweet gig across most groups not named Industrials and Energy.
I’ve also seen people from WF exit to UMM firms. From what I’ve seen, many WF analysts don’t do on-cycle recruiting or don’t succeed given lack of deals and ability to spin a story. The people who I’ve seen go to UMM firms did go through on-cycle recruiting and dedicated a lot of time in undergrad itself preparing for interviews. Think a lot of people at WF are behind the curve on prep but that they don’t feel the pressure to recruit immediately given that they work with a decent amount of A2As and can see a path to better WLB through IB initially. I saw a lot of people realize during year 2 how mundane and tedious the job can get and sadly, most good firms have already filled up their seats for the next year or two by then.
Mind sharing what UMM funds folk ended up at? Not saying you’re wrong or anything but when I looked I didn’t see anyone who didn’t lateral somewhere else first at a GTCR/H&F/FP type fund
I actually went and did a LinkedIn search, I didn’t find anyone that didn’t lateral first or go to MM PE and then lateral at any of H&F, GTCR, Clearlake, Veritas, NMC, FP, BDT, MDP, Berkshire, Centerbridge, or LGP. Obviously this isn’t like every UMM fund and I wasn’t like exhaustively looking but I figured if I didn’t find them at any of these there might be like 3-4 guys total