EMEA LevFin Realistic exits
I’ve read a lot of the older European LevFin threads, but I’m still struggling to pin down what’s actually realistic from BNP LevFin in EMEA.
From what I’ve seen, BNP shows up consistently in European leveraged loan / LevFin league tables and seems to run meaningful lead-left roles on larger financings. However, I’m trying to understand how the day-to-day skillset compares versus BB LevFin and versus more markets-facing credit roles.
I recently spoke with someone in JPM LevFin who said their team is heavily execution-focused and that a lot of the detailed modeling work is pushed to coverage. I’ve also heard the opposite about BNP LevFin: that their teams do relatively more of the modeling / debt capacity work in-house.
Besides, I am interested to understand better the most common exits you’ve seen from BNP EMEA LevFin
And specifically, how realistic are the following outcomes:
- Direct lending / private credit (MM vs UMM vs MF )
- HY Bond Analyst (liquid credit)
- CLO manager investing roles (loan analyst / research)
- CLO structuring (bank structuring desk / structured credit)
- HY / leveraged loan/ Syndication desk analyst (bank trading desk)
- Lateral moves to BB's Levfin
I am asking this as I’m also generally interested in a capital markets / markets-facing credit path longer term.
bump
All Levfin shops are execution focused(CS was the last bank that did any sort of in house modelling). This is a flow product, the way Banking works is the coverage team do all modelling work for the product team. I can tell you not everybody in Levfin can build a model(3 Statement/ LBO) and this is fine because it’s not really required. You’re mainly doing proforma Captables, Rating Agency Presentation, internal credit memo, underwriting leverage from cash flow projection done by coverage, then slapping in Cap tables copied from 9fin or Reorg haha, Debt comps and in the end syndicate guage the pricing.
BNP is good for European Corporates(relationship bank) but the bulk of Levfin Transactions is LBO or sponsors driven, this is where the differences lies, the FSG team at JP and BNP is not comparable, JP has the upper hand.
All exits listed are posible, but in the PC space we’re seeing Rx& Coverage fighting for a share of the pie too, some are also langauge dependent. Also, reps matters, the more high profile deal underwritten the better.
I might be dated but was in LevFin during my analyst days few years ago (now in PE at a MF as a mid-level professional) CS wasn’t the only team that was not execution focused only. DB, BofA (and few more) also had teams with decent exits reflecting that they did more than what you described. Granted exits from my old team don’t appear to be nearly as good as they were so you might be right (more direct lending / capital markets vs PE / special sits historically)… it probably also largely reflects PE funds now having fully staffed CapMarkets team (so arguably the value that a LevFin shop does is basically none besides execution / syndication capabilities) - so PE professionals might not value the LevFin skillset the way they used to few years ago and view it as more commodity.
Former BNP Levfin intern here(ignore title). BNP Levfin does plenty of modelling and I would argue it’s defining characteristic of the team. We interns all had to do an LBO modelling case study to get the offer and received some more in house modelling training on the first week of our internship. At BNP the TMT leveraged financing subteam is on the same floor as the other Levfin bankers and their bred and butter is project finance for Media& Telecom corporates. It’s true this is not the case for all Levfin teams ( for instance current UBS team doesn’t do in-house modeling) but BNP Levfin bankers tend to be very good at modeling.
Anyways back to the initial point - I think all of these besides maybe CLO structuring should be achievable, with varying ease. MF private credit is probably the most sought after role out of the ones you listed so arguably the hardest (they might be more focused on US banks or traditional BBs vs BNPP) but they hire quite a bit, lateraling to another bank in LevFin is quite easy provided that other banks are hiring which is a big question and market driven (a lot of moves happened in 2020-2021 and then nothing in 2022-2023 for instance, 2024-2025 saw a bit of a pickup I think but not sure).
Is the Bonus in LevFin at BB banks similar as in the M&A / Coverage teams or is it lower?
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