BofA vs. Barclays vs. Citi vs. Credit Suisse

NYC offices only: From what I can gather on this site, these 4 banks have typically been in the same range in terms of exit opps and overall prestige. I know this has been covered a lot, but I'm wondering if anyone has more recent thoughts given the craziness of 2021 (looking at you, Archegos) on the exit opps, WLB, culture, deal flow, and overall prestige between these 4 banks in NYC. Some kind of definite ranking specifically for exit opps would be pretty cool as well. Thanks!

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Overall weighting the average across all groups I'd say it's BofA >> Citi > Barclays > CS. BofA is by far the most well-rounded across all groups with no exceptionally weak group. Barclays and Citi have their good groups (M&A/Power/Comms/Tech for Citi, NatRes/P&U/Sponsors at Barclays) and their average groups, but also have weak groups, and after the LevFin and FIG exodus post-Archegos I'd argue CS's only standout group is Sponsors (not sure how TMT or Industrials is there).

Barclays and Citi are probably equal, but I'm dinging Barclays for their discount and incompetent HR (take a guess where I'm at).

 

Hard to say what the impact of Archegos will be long term for CS - lost a lot of senior bankers (many to the other 3 BBs listed in your post).Ranking these 4 is pointless because it depends on which group you're in. At my top target, I've seen people choose any of these over any of the other ones.Go where you and your school have the best relationships to optimize for a strong group placement.Final note: this kid on this forum recently analyzed exit ops across a bunch of the EBs and BBs using linkedin data. Initial data makes it seem like it's Bofa > Citi > CS > Barclays, but in reality Barc and CS have notably smaller class sizes (not counting all the product groups at Barc that rarely place to PE) so these 4 are pretty comparable.

 

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