Curious to hear an IB perspective on the difference between corporates and sponsors as clients
I know there's going to be a lot of variation depending on individual clients, so please try generalize across your experiences.
Here are a few questions to start the discussion, but please feel free to offer your own perspectives and experiences beyond what's being explicitly asked for here.
Which one:
- Asks for tighter deadlines?
- Usually has their shit together more often? (i.e., can actually populate a dataroom within a reasonable timeframe)
- Makes more unreasonable demands?
- Is harder to court as a client? (probably need a senior banker to answer this one)
- Involves more politics?
- Treats you like a vendor rather than an advisor/partner?
- Has people with shittier personalities?
I'd also be curious to hear (once again, probably from a senior banker's perspective) the difference between pitching to a management team/board at a corporate vs. a principal/partner of a fund.
I have my own assumptions and opinions on this, but I'd like to hear answers from a sell-side perspective given that I have no prior IB experience.
Bump
from what i’ve heard from everyone in my group: 1-3 sponsors, 4-5 no fucking clue i’m not a senior, 6-7 sponsors. Have heard similar from friends in our industrials group, which also does a lot of sponsor-facing work
I appreciate your response. Seems like juniors would much rather be staffed on a corporate deal than a sponsor deal.
Yes and no. While they may be harder to deal with sponsors tend to understand the process better and know what they're looking for. So while they may have more demands, you usually get good direction whereas a corporate client may only transact every 5+ years and require a lot of handholding. More handholding means more work & re-work (i.e. going into a pitch the sponsor likely knows exactly what they want to do so the pitch can be more targeted vs. a corporate who may not know and wants to see variations of every possible choice). Also corporates have less certainty to close since it's pretty easy for them to decide they don't want to transact vs. a sponsor who's more inclined to transact unless the value is really far off expectations.
In addition to the comments above, a way to think about it is that the more sophisticated a client is, the more painful they are for juniors and probably harder to handle for seniors. This is the case because the more sophisticated they are, the higher the expectations they have.
PEs tend to be more sophisticated than corporates but in some sectors (infra) you may have equally sophisticated corporates.
Usually the more (ex-)bankers the client has, the more sophisticated they are.
That makes sense. Seems like the job at the senior level can be very different when covering primarily corporates (at, say, a BB/EB) vs. primarily sponsors (at MM).
To summarize the answers so far, courting corporates require a lot more work, but you’re treated like an advisor and you do more strategy + potential for more blue sky-like thinking. On the other hand, sponsors tend to be more flow-driven and easier to court, but you’re treated like a vendor who has the connections necessary to run sell-sides efficiently, and there isn’t much room for strategy apart from who you shoot the CIM to.
Does that sound accurate?
Sharing a few other points here - i work in a very large corporate.
What do we typically ask bankers to do?
Valuation? Only at the pitch stage. When we get ideas from bankers we often ask for deep dives to do a first pass on a topic before the team spends any time (we’re too busy)
Process management? Nope, we have a team dedicated to that
Negotiating terms? That’s more where we get the lawyers in. We’re in a contract heavy industry, typical banker can only help so much
Crazy requests? Yeah that happens, because we’re a few bankers in the team. But we also try to think hard about what matters or not, and whether the data has a shot at demonstrating something meaningful
In my past experience as a banker:
Generally, sponsors are more painful but more intent on transacting.
Buyside mandates from corporates are not too hadd to get (I got a few as a VP). Sell sides are something else… you get buysides from BD or divisional CEOs. Sell-side of a company is Board matter, and if you don’t have existing relationships they are incredibly hard to generate.
As a junior, you need a mix of both. It’s important because it helps understand both types of operators.
Since this forum acts like all the smart people move to PE and the average people stay in IB, does this actually translate into attitudes and respect in the real world i.e. do sponsors act like they're better than bankers when they work together? Or is it just WSO prestige stuff
Nah we're really the PE guys' bitches. Like they joke around at closing dinners about "Phew, I bet so-and-so is happy he doesn't have to pull anymore XYZ reports for us!"
Neque et eos dolor autem libero. Recusandae delectus est adipisci aspernatur architecto consectetur voluptatem. Asperiores deleniti aperiam similique nesciunt totam quia. Omnis necessitatibus sunt voluptatibus.
See All Comments - 100% Free
WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something. Unlock with your email and get bonus: 6 financial modeling lessons free ($199 value)
or Unlock with your social account...