BofA Expands Middle Market Practice (again)

I think cause EGRC was so bad they're trying to do something more similar to JPM's model

Strategy is to spray and pray at this point because EGRC is incompetent. 100 senior bankers in that group and revenues are the tiniest. Stacking washed up bankers in random cities across the nation to say to the markets they are building out a MM squad on paper. Every hire they make is someone who has barely any legitimate origination experience in IB or some guy that got booted out at the bank or at another bank who is coming to BAML to get a payout. If I have to be cross staffed on another EGRC deal I am going to quit.

The expansion makes sense from a long-term client coverage perspective. The middle market can be a good place for a bank to build relationships with companies before they become large enough to require more complex investment banking services.

For BofA, expanding the practice could also help strengthen its pipeline across M&A, capital raising, and other advisory work. The challenge, though, is execution. Adding more coverage bankers doesn't automatically translate into better results unless the teams have strong local relationships and can differentiate themselves from competitors that are already well established in the middle market.

It will be interesting to see whether BofA is simply adding capacity or whether this is part of a broader effort to build a stronger presence in the middle market. The latter would probably be the more meaningful development over time.

It’s a direction-less group and play. They group has no central leadership, and this is just Mike Joo’s pet project. It will be another strategic mistake by BofA, after a string of strategic mistakes. Other banks are getting more efficient with AI usage, and this bank is rolling out the red carpet for washed out bankers for an expansion strategy.

It was the “brilliant” idea of one of the co-heads of IB when he was the IB COO. Can’t admit failure in this job so doubling down on the strategy. Don’t worry though, he continues to pad his own pockets by taking clients and bankers to restaurants he co-owns (I.e. Cocodaq, Cote) and is a minority owner of the Bills.

EGRC is pure cringe. I would not wish working with an EGRC team on my worst enemies. Their juniors are probably the worst on the street because the bank decided it was a good idea to bundle all the worst bottom bucket junior bankers from other groups and dump them in EGRC. Almost all of the EGRC seniors are washed up bankers that competitors laid off for poor performance, bankers that have little experience in actually doing investment banking or similarly poor performers from other groups that got trashed canned into this group. The junior bankers there contribute nothing because they don't know how to do anything or are just lazy and the senior bankers just get on calls to LARP since they don't have any coverage knowledge and act as a pass through entity for most deals. 

Del