Citi vs Evercore FT London

Not too sure about Evercore but heard Citi base is 70k

Citi TMT would have better exit opps and dealflow in London.  They just handled the PMI/Swedish Match deal. 

Not sure about specifics but I see Citi TMT openings every now and then, seems they have a bit of churn. Worth knowing what you’re getting yourself into. Would still take it over Evercore.

Take Evercore for better IT systems. Citi is great if you like spending 5 hours refreshing your comps file at 2am. This aspect of the analyst experience is seriously underrated and makes a huge difference to your quality of life.

Do not know about Citi TMT specifically, but I worked with another of their London sector teams on a deal. My team had done several deals with Citi before and they straight up HATED Citi. Culture also seemed really shitty. Their VP could not take comments even from the client. The client put in some really fair comments and their VP tilted in a meeting with 30+ people containing some really senior folks at the client. Imagine what it's like being an analyst under a VP like that. Also have a friend who interned there. His experience was so bad that he promised he would never ever set a foot in finance ever again. But then again, this is not for the TMT team, so doesn't need to be representative at all. 

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Interviewed with Evercore LDN, lovely people, rapidly expanding, nice office etc. It definitely seems like the better working experience.

If you want exits or pay (Evercore LDN bonuses were meh the last couple years), take Citi

Having worked at both I can confirm Evercore is a much better option in terms of comp, culture and quality of exit.

Citi gives you optionality as I used to be approached for business dev / start-up / MM fund positions etc. Now I get less inbounds but they’re of a much better quality (MFs, UMMs, …)

Have also heard the same about their london office

Yes

Having worked at both I can confirm Citi is a much better option in terms of comp, culture and quality of exit.

Evercore gives you HH requests from MM PE funds, but even those are hard to come by. Now I get more inbounds from MFs, UMMs. Don't listen to these idiots above who are salty about going to an EB, which all are trash in London other than Lazard and Rothschild. 

All BBs have significantly better exits than EBs (except Roths and Laz) which might be on par with tier 2 BBs. HHs reach out less, tougher to get interviews, and your deal experience might put you at disadvantage. 

Do not know about Evercore M&A specifically, but I worked with another of their London sector teams on a deal. My team had done several deals with EVR before and they straight up HATED EVR. Culture also seemed really shitty. Their VP could not take comments even from the client. The client put in some really fair comments and their VP tilted in a meeting with 30+ people containing some really senior folks at the client. Imagine what it's like being an analyst under a VP like that. Also have a friend who interned there. His experience was so bad that he promised he would never ever set a foot in finance ever again. But then again, this is not for the M&A team, so doesn't need to be representative at all. 

Interviewed with both and Evercore has better offices but Citi all the way. Don't even kid yourself.

Citi used to be a clear notch above Evercore for exits, but nowadays they proportionally exit similarly. Comp will always be higher at Evercore but not by a significant amount. Evercore EMEA deal flow is good at present and is expected to be excellent soon, whereas Citis' EMEA deal flow is already excellent. So the main differentiator here is culture, pick based on that. Another thing to keep in mind is trajectory and I will explain that below with a brief history lesson.

Had this been asked 5+ years ago when they were just getting off their feet from their lexicon acquisition and with their American brand still yet to really kick in, then I would have picked Citi as the no-brainer. Funnily enough, this is actually the exact decision I made. Why? Well yes, evr was this hot American bank, consistently clocking top 10 in league tables with their analysts in New York exiting to pretty much every single MF, but who knew how well they would fare in Europe? The US EB model was extremely hard to mirror in Europe, and at that time only really Lazard and Roths had great success with it and they had been in Europe for over 100 years.
Simply put, there were not enough precedents for new American EB's who had great success in NYC and were founded in the late 90s and significantly disrupted the European M&A market. At this time, PWP would have been an exception and even then that was mostly specifically in Germany. Look at the rest though, moelis m&a was and still is lacklustre, Greenhill m&a was good and now is lacklustre, Centerview m&a was quality but the deal flow was low, pjt m&a was lacklustre and is now okay. Pretty bleak outlook for most EB's, so It made sense for me to just choose Citi. However, I underestimated how competitive Weinberg is, which was a silly mistake given his family history. Simply put, the momentum that Evercore has built up in their London and Paris offices over the last 3 years is pretty incredible and shows that they have no plans of stopping trying to crack the European code even though they don't really need to. You can look into some of the recent rainmaker hires yourself, but all I will share is the infographic below. The only comment on the table I will make is that when I rejected Evercore a few years back, they were not this high. 

On the other hand, Citi is doing Bora Bora and their CEO is Jane Fraser. Significantly less upside potential in a career at Citi nowadays. Sure, Evercore might just randomly have a Greenhill happen to it (There is no way in hell Weinberg would let that happen) so if you're more risk-averse then just pick Citi or BAML for example. However, you are already pretty risk-averse by going into banking so how much more of a pussy do you want to be?

GS/MS/JP is Still above both and I don't see that changing any time soon, hence why I laterally moved from Citi to one of the top 3.