Any UK bankers had interactions with Clearwater International, a regional boutique? They just opened there grad programme for Birmingham (one of the few banks still recruiting) and was wondering there comp, prestige etc…
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Clearwater is a reasonable LMM advisory house. They have a lot of regional flow but wouldn’t be considered as competing with tier 1 or tier 2 banks. You could describe them as competing with the big 4 or regional accounting/corporate finance houses.
Their combo is super weak - e.g. 90k base in London for someone with 4-5 years experience.
Culture wise - they’re nice people with decent WLB
Thanks. Any idea of comp and exit opps? Would MM PE be possible or would a better plan be to lateral to a better shop first.
it's between 30-35k in London, I assume in Birmingham you might be looking at the 25-30k range. You'd probably have to exit to a better IB before you exit to reputable PE. It might be alright if you want to do regional PE outside of London though.
Ah fair enough so it’s considered a good step below even your Numis, finncap etc… Feel like big4 corpfin would be a better career starter
Clearwater International is a solid LMM house. I believe comp for first years in London a few years back was £45k base, not sure about bonus.
In terms of who they compete with, I'd guess it's BDO M&A, RSM M&A, Grant Thornton M&A, Cavendish (FinnCap), and the big 4 regional M&A teams. They may compete with big 4 London M&A teams on slightly larger deals.
The big 4 M&A teams tend to cover both the LMM (no real definition, but lets say sub £50m EV deals) and the more traditional middle of the road MM (lets say £50m to £300m EV) deals. They compete among themselves (i.e. other big 4), Rothschild, DC Advisory, Arrowpoint, Investec, Houlihan Lokey, Alantra, Baird, Raymond James, Harris Williams, etc. on the larger deals and against the bucket that Clearwater plays in, on the smaller ones.
Clearwater comp would be higher than big 4. But big 4 exit opps are (far) superior IMO. A lot of big 4 guys over the last year have exited to MMs, EBs, and in quite a few cases - BBs. The EBs and BBs would prefer guys from the big 4 than a Clearwater.
The corporate brokers like Numis, and Peel Hunt do have IB teams, but I feel they are more focused on the equity side, with smaller M&A propositions, so they don't pop up that often in mid-market M&A pitch processes. Heard they have good cultures and comp though.
How would you rank regional offices of bigger shops, like D.C. in Manchester or Roth in Leeds/Manchester?
I must admit I don't know too much about how strong each firm is within Manchester / Leeds.
Suspect it'd be something like....
Roths / DC Advisory
GCA / GP Bullhound
Big 4
Clearwater / Zeus
Thanks, this is helpful. I’m assuming all regional offices will have a much harder time exiting to London MM PE even at the bigger names
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