I hold an offer to join DB in London as a SA but I saw that Moelis is still recruiting for their summer analyst class.
According to previous posts, Moelis seems very weak in London especially for M&A and general consensus is BB > EB except maybe for Laz/Roth/PJT.
Do you think it makes sense to start a process with Moelis or should I stick with my offer? Have they been growing their European presence recently? How are they viewed by HHs?
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Don't think it's worth the effort unless you were interested in restructuring.
Also you're getting a bit ahead of yourself lol if you don't even have interview
Working there. Expanding aggressively in London. Better than DB IMO (generally, but more so if you’re interested in RX/credit). That said, if you have an offer from DB and haven’t even applied to Moelis, I don’t see the point of this post. Go with DB
Has moelis filled the 2024 SA class for London?
Go with db, they basically both have the same prestige in London. Not worth your time.
If you have offer from DB but no offer from Moelis, go with DB. You are never guaranteed an offer (especially in this environment)
Echoing what was said above. Take what you got, massive risk to not accept that offer in such uncertain times… Why would you even think to reject in early Februar, most SA classes are very likely full or will be filled in the next round.
I already accepted the offer from DB back in November but I am considering reneging for something that would be a major step up and was wondering if Moelis is. The reason is that I saw a ranking post on WSO which showed that DB is now perceived to be on par with the likes of BNPP or SocGen
Try to recruit still with Moelis. DB in London is quite scrambling for deals and lacks focus
BBs (especially DB here) are held in higher regard in Europe than in US, especially for PE recruiting (although over time this will change towards EBs like in US)
I disagree - in 9 years of me working in London, Moelis went from no-name to top feeder to PE. For disclosure - I did not work in Moelis.
Though in many cases, Moelis people moved to likes of BX credit and KKR special sit, which I still believe are good options and often offer more specialisation and hence occasionally better hours than pure sweatshops of MFs. On a number front - probably you can say more people from DB go to PE than from Moelis because DB class is bigger than Moelis but even that became less true as DB just does not place as it used to do in let’s say 2013-2016.
In comparison, in last two years of being in one of the seemingly top sector groups at DB, I saw none of the juniors going somewhere reasonable. Main reason for that is the simple fact that Moelis has much better origination and deal teams are leaner. The second is, as easily checkable on any type of league table, DB is difficult to be seen as BB given limited deals dozens of too eagerly hired MDs bring.
Hence, during interviews you really can shine with your prior experience, if you worked at Moelis vs pitching sweat at DB, and you also developed enough commercial acumen to do the case study well.
DB maybe has good prestige in Frankfurt (hence you say Europe), not necessarily convinced about that in London.
Thanks for the insight, appreciate it. A bit off-topic:
What do you think of the growth initiatives of DB in the UK and in EMEA more broadly? They hired dozens of senior bankers including head of M&A EMEA at Citi and head of M&A EMEA at CS. They also compare the acquisition of Numis to the one made by JPM with Cazenove, arguing that the deal is the reason why JPM is #1 in the UK and that they can follow the same success path.
As someone who will graduate in 2025, do you think I should even care about the "potential" of the firm I am joining? For instance on one hand DB may climb the league tables within the next 5 years due to the investments they made and on the other hand Barclays or UBS are as of today better but are not interested to grow further their IB platforms
Overall the question was whether to apply to Moelis. Generally, that early in your career - you should keep applying and interviewing. You will only get better in interviewing if you do it. Most of my friends who moved to PE and stayed there - interviewed a lot, and even now, when they have seemingly safe jobs, they keep interviewing.
Having worked in JPM, I can say JPM and Caz is a different level of integration, and before JPM paid for Caz, Caz and JPM run JV. That way JPM knew that they are buying more than just a bunch of corporate broking accounts. JPM and Caz sit in one building yet have their own P&Ls and also both benefit equally well from excellent JPM US network. I would say the acquisition worked well as JPM has just a great platform both in terms of large m&a but also mid market and corporate bank where people are quite keen to share info and be very transparent about what they need to succeed. There is a very limited number of other banks in London that came to equal level of integration, and I have not heard about such level of integration between Deutsche and Numis.
For seniors - in such commoditised environment, I sometimes doubt if clients change their perception just because of the banker. Ultimately, some just prefer to work with the most comprehensive service provider that can handle well both FX exposure, provide quickly RCF and navigate through difficult carve-out process.
Pop quiz: Ever heard of anyone who got an SA from applying as late as February? That should answer your question on whether it's worth your time
Yes! Last minute cancellations happen and I know at least three banks trying to top up their summer internships in London right now.
I got mine in May 2022 lmao shut up dumbass
Moelis does this quite a lot, interviewed w them in mid-March for their SA process before
1. You dont even have an interview yet and if the best offer you could get this cycle was DB, you shouldn't feel so confident that you would even get a first round interview for moelis(no offence).
2. Yes BB>EB except for Laz/Roth/Evr/PJT but db is arguably not even a BB lmao. Jokes aside though, that rule only really applies to the us BB's, there's a lot more ambiguity between a barclays/ubs/db and a cvp/moelis/pwp and most would lean towards the latter offer as pe recruiting there would be similar(except cvp maybe) but you also get higher comp.
3. Just accept DB but shoot your shot with mo co and get the test done (should not take more than 1hr total) but quite frankly even if you are a top candidate, its unlikely you will get any response this late into the season.
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