Best Renewables Shops?
See title - very interested in renewables (especially M&A) and would love to hear what shops might have the best groups regardless of location. Know Marathon Capital has solid private M&A deal flow but what about EBs practices? Or any others?
Marathon is not good. They do really small deals and only get mandates because their fees are minimal (below $2mm)
hmm interesting - so they undercut comp. to win mandates? Any suggestions on peers?
+1. Have never seen Marathon on a notable platform deal. They chase very vanilla assets / dry OpCo portfolio sell downs - no complexity and as a result generally don’t develop significant insight at the analyst level
Lmao standard solar
Greentech
Hard to find contacts on linkedin because they're under the greater Nomura brand. Have also heard Nomura culture pretty shitty - wondering if Greentech operates more independently
got some friends there. it seemed they operate more independently - bank within a different bank
Nomura Greentech (as mentioned above) and TPH come to mind. Probably a few others that are solid in renewables but nobody’s really dominating from what i’ve seen
always thought TPH was more Oil & Gas focused than renewables, looks as if they've expanded out to all energy. Do you know if they operate independently of Parella/does Parella have their own Renewables arm as well? Can't derive from website.
TPH does renewables, but that’s run through PWP similarly to O&G RX, where the Perella team needs lots of insight from the TPH people, but still largely PWP as the leader. Overall TPH is stronger in upstream than anything else, and dealflow is a bit strange.
Know less about Greentech, but did interview there a while back. Appears like they are really strong in the sector, used to pay really well (not sure now post acquisition, and are a very respected name in the renewables space. Still, my interview sucked. Interviewer was clearly massively overworked and was extremely late to the interview (30 mins to an hour level late). Also very rude and confrontational. During networking people were better which is why I pursued it in the first place, but honestly a miserable interview experience killed it for me. Heard they’re sweaty, but not worth dealing with shitty people on top of shitty hours.
All the bulges have established renewables franchises at this point. Definitely greentech, and I don’t know much about marathon but it seems like they’re doing alright for their scale.
thank you - this is helpful. BB life just sounds horrible - shit hours shit pay. Any certain BB's come to mind?
Really all of them, I’ve worked across and alongside everyone except UBS and DB lately. I don’t have a lot of granularity on specifics, they’re all probably going to be organized differently internally from bank to bank. Would say most are based in NYC offices, but Chicago and Houston offices tend to play in different parts of the renewables value chain too with EVs/RNG/CCS.
Nice
shoutout
Why M&A? Why not Project Finance?
M&A much more interesting to me. AFAIK project finance seems very, very model intensive and I'd rather be working in CIMS and working with people. Is that an accurate representation?
Intrepid fp in Houston has a lot of renewables coverage. Also have an in house green energy vc fund that their analysts work on as well. Pretty cool place.
username check out - looks like they only pull exclusively from UT and SMU though
deleted
Work at one of the aforementioned banks. Following are the banks I've seen focused on renewables -
1.) Marathon Capital- strong M&A practice in both the renewables and cleantech, very technical, well regarded in the industry
2.) Cohnreznick Capital - like marathon, well regarded in the industry and technical work but has focused more on renewables asset M&A, debt and tax equity raises as opposed to clean tech
3.) Nomura Greentech - probably the most well known renewables focused bank, typically does more platforms (as opposed to assets) and cleantech. Do your research on them since they are known to be very sweaty
4.) KeyBank - one of the largest renewable energy lenders and recently got into the M&A game by poaching the Fifth Third renewables team. Fairly new team but have seen them on a couple of transactions.
5.) OnPeak Capital - Small shop founded by a former BB rainmaker focused on renewables. Most of the junior team is from banks above. Despite their size and being farily new, they have closed some good transactions.
Lazard has been extremely active in the space and closed multiple marquee platform transactions. Evercore poached the MDs at CS and are expanding their infra team to focus on renewables - I wouldn't be surprised to see them get more active in this space in the US (Evercore is very active in the European renewables space). I've also heard that Guggenheim's power and utilities team has done a few renewables transactions but haven't seen them around a lot in the market.
Most BBs house their renewables team within their Power and Utilities teams (Goldman's renewables team is housed within their Natural Resources group). While these banks do occasionally work on renewables focused transactions, more often than not you'll also have to work on traditional power and utilities transactions - if you're purely interested in renewables, this might not be the best path. However, the big banks are also the biggest renewable energy tax equity investors and have groups focused on those transactions.
What is with all the fanboys for marathon and Cohn around here. They are not top shops by any mean and pay well below street + do not place well.
OnPeak is one MD and a bunch of Cohn dudes who weren’t going anywhere. They’ve done like 6 deals in 2 years - big deal maybe they’ll expand but not top 4 AT ALL.
Lazard / EVR crush most of who you listed per placements and comp
greentech is “good” but they suck as people and are arguably the most toxic shop
This, coming from a Power & Renewables banker
Never said that they're better than Lazard or Evercore. It all depends on what you're interested in. If you're interested in working on asset financing/M&A or purely focused on renewables, you are unlikely to get that experience at a bigger bank. On the flip side, if you're interested in working on platform transactions or don't mind working on conventional power and utilities transactions along with renewables, bigger banks might be a better fit.
Sure, comp at Lazard or Evercore probably blow the banks above out of the water, but this is something most people are aware of before signing on. With the exception of Nomura Greentech, the banks above generally have a much better work-life balance. Exits to the buy side are probably better from Evercore and Lazard. However as interest in renewables grows, the demand for the skillset in renewable energy project finance modeling/understanding the market dynamics and financing arrangements of renewable energy assets will only go up. Apart from the buy side, another logical exit is to work for developers, all of whom regard the banks listed above highly and would prioritize renewables focused transaction experience.
When it comes to renewables focused IB, Greentech, Marathon and Cohnreznick are the three that jump out.
I also used to work at one of the aforementioned shops, and can vouch for high hope's authenticity
I was really deep into Cohn's SA interviewing last year - ridiculous to make kids do excel tests, modeling tests, and 5 rounds of interviews before hearing about offers. People seemed boring too.
Many of the houston energy shops are ramping up transition/renewables coverage.
My power group works with Macquarie sometimes might be worth checking out
Nomura Greentech and it isn't close. There is an alum at every notable cleantech/renewable fund w/ the exceTtion of Stonepeak, ECP, EQT, iSquared and Brookfield (but I give the latter 2 a pass because I think it's more to do w/ Miami/Toronto relocation willingness). Guaranteed interviews pretty much anywhere infra/energy related. I think the question is not "can you get exits" but more so if you have the heart to continue working in finance after being utterly disrespected and brutalized for two years. I showed my roommate a horror story I saw posted on Litquidity or WSO that one time (fuzzy on details but Lazard or Moelis VP was rude and demanding at 2am at a weekend or something stupid) and he responded deadass that happened every day, every weekend for him. Stuff goes very under the radar here (or at least it used to, not sure if it's gotten better or worse post-acquistion)
Exits in the last 3 years:
- GIP
- MIRA
- Carlyle
- Warburg Pincus
- Ares
- Google
- GS Sustainable (could be wrong, but I think the spin out of the energy guys in special sits)
- GS Renewable
- SoftBank
- DE Shaw
- Quantum
- Activate
Good amount of non-green exits as well. MM PE (Odyssey), real estate, Centerview / Evercore A2As, crypto and corp dev (Rivian). No one A2As... think every Associate there is MBA or poached from another IB shop.
Analyst classes are fairly small as well (5? 6?) so you can do the math. Some of the places I listed above have multiple alum too (DE has 2, GS has 2, etc)
This. Close to my understanding, amazing exit opps but tough hours
Neque sint ea similique et. Sit sit qui vero et tempore. Delectus fuga ratione consequatur voluptatibus.
Itaque quos aut minima sunt vel. Explicabo ut ad rerum hic aliquid sit eum.
Aliquam qui voluptatem voluptas magnam. Ea est ut reiciendis laboriosam voluptatem quasi et. Eum autem debitis possimus fugit voluptatem eos.
Asperiores et culpa adipisci sapiente perferendis. Ipsa explicabo in occaecati accusamus deserunt laboriosam. Officia voluptatem nemo impedit nisi. Deserunt necessitatibus repellat natus quis. Ducimus quaerat veritatis aperiam dolor aliquam earum culpa. Aut fugiat ut ullam cumque dolorum sed tempora. Sit animi ut omnis qui.
See All Comments - 100% Free
WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something. Unlock with your email and get bonus: 6 financial modeling lessons free ($199 value)
or Unlock with your social account...
Rem nihil et aut. Atque optio porro magni ab modi facilis atque. Eius officiis similique et magnam qui expedita.
Eos quia dolorum repudiandae et similique perferendis nihil consectetur. Qui ut modi veritatis ratione. Molestiae eveniet eligendi molestiae et omnis voluptatem. Excepturi eum dolor minima est. Quibusdam est repudiandae et qui laborum. Iste aut sed culpa odio voluptas velit magnam.
Magni voluptas et consequatur quaerat nisi quia. Et harum accusamus impedit recusandae magni nam nam nisi. Veritatis repellendus sit odio qui placeat delectus illo.