CS M&A Product Group

Happy to shed some light based on my experience having interned both in a coverage group and M&A group. In coverage groups (well in my team anyway) we tend to do more pitching as opposed to execution. Usually, we provided the industry pieces in client discussions/deliverables and the M&A team is more involved in the process management (day-to-day logistics) of a deal. So from this, I think on the whole, M&A analysts tend to have more deal experience. M&A teams still work in pitches but not as much as coverage groups. At the M&A places I was at, I spent most of my time on mandates and very little time on pitching. I think in general, coverage groups tend to hold the pen on the model so get more modeling experience - but this could be team and bank dependent but could to check with the team you're interviewing with.

With regards to CS's London M&A team - I've heard it has a good culture but probably not in the top 3 M&A team across the BBs (which is predominantly dominated by MS, GS and JPM)