Comp at MM Banks?

1 or 2, maybe 3, and sometimes 4.

No in all seriousness, this is a question that only matters if you have offers from all places and you should try to get a job at each because every single one would give you great job prospects post the role. Also, getting an offer from all is extremely unlikely. Generally speaking, comp looks like this: EB’s > Top MM’s > BB’s.

The top MM’s need to pay more to get good talent and the BB’s can bank on their name to draw prestige chasers who will decline on the extra salary in exchange for a better brand. That said, something I always feel the need to explain to younger individuals entering the field: mm banks aren’t worse than BB banks, it’s a different market strategy. The best analogy I give: much in the way you don’t say VC investors are worse than traders who deal with Public Equitys, mm banks are usually just dealing with smaller companies compared to BB banks. They might be smaller because the companies are less successful, or they might be smaller because they are just younger and have had less years to grow and scale. It is a fact that there are many more smaller companies than big companies, but it also is a fact that a banker makes more money by doing a big deal compared to a small deal. As a result, mm banks often try to do more deals but smaller ones and large banks do fewer, but bigger deals. Now that said, groups vary significantly across banks as well and each has their own specialty and the perceived MM versus BB versus EB ranks fall apart very quickly in sectors. If you wanted to sell a billion dollar technology company there are some mm banks who would make more sense than a BB. If you want to sell a 400m med device company, you likely wouldn’t chose Barclays over piper sandler. In terms of career progression as well, the type of job you take largely depends on what you want to do in the future.