European IBs & Commercial Banks

Paris: hard for foreigners, French don't (want to) speak English. W/L for As is worse than Lon to my understanding. Madrid/Milan: same as Paris + 50% lower comp, but great places to live (pre covid at least..) Frankfurt: professionally OK, but living there.. Vienna: no deal exposure, good w/l balance Belgium: hardly any IB there Amsterdam: ok-ish on all aspects Lux: no clue Zurich: professionally OK (just below Frankfurt I would say), salaries good but high cost of living

Will chime in as have interned/worked in a couple of these places:

Milan As regards Mediobanca, I believe the poster above meant they are “up and coming” in the European space because for Italy they are very much kings in M&A, especially FIG M&A, they basically get every mandate in the space. Canzonieri (head of IB) is Italy’s best banker and is VERY hands-on. Messier Maris was a great acquisition. RE is also top in Italy with Lazard. I would say there’s a fair bit of distance (both in terms of deals done and reputation) between them and the runner ups. Mediobanca S&T is ok, don’t do too much in flows but thanks to IB always have good deals to pitch to clients. Analyst 1 pay is 45k in Milan, drops off at the associate level (think 85k) compared to peers so quite common for analysts to bounce to the American firms after their analyst years. This is also because culture for IB in Mediobanca isn’t great, lots of facetime and bosses are pretty old school in terms of not giving a damn about ruining analyst and associate’s nights. Still, probably best place to be in Milan for IB. Unicredit are ok, obviously better at DCM deals where they can throw their balance sheet around, don’t do much in S&T. Intesa, as mentioned above, go under the Banca IMI brand for IB although there’s been talks of uniting Banca IMI under the broader Intesa brand (not many are happy about this). As described above, DCM and structured finance are pretty solid and IB in general is good, S&T also decent

School split is basically 60% Bocconi, 20% Cattolica, 20% Politecnico. The Bocconi crew is fairly tight-knit, so a bit hard to feel at home if you’re an outsider. Milan in general is nice, restaurants and bars are more attractively priced (and better imho) than Paris and London. No Pret-a-manger in Milan though so kind of a pain when you just have time for a sandwich in between meetings (definitely gonna get hit by MS for this). Clubbing is fine, there’s the fashion crew which is both good and bad (to each their own I guess). Rent in Milan has gone up pretty drastically in the last couple of years, perhaps more as a function of it being far smaller than the other large European cities. You basically have to be Italian to work in Milan (some foreigners in the S&T desks, 90% speak Italian fluently though).

Madrid Don’t know much about Santander and BBVA IB, from the limited people I met in the space I think BBVA is a little more interesting as they have embraced the LATAM/Central america coverage a bit better and they don’t have the dreadful Ana Botin making decisions. For S&T I got the impression that unlike in Milan, most of the flows come from London, in the sense that the Madrid desks are quite lean. Still, know of lots of Spanish guys who given the choice come back to Madrid after their first 2-3 years in London because COL is so much lower. Rent and going out is really good, both in terms of price and experience. Schools represented I would say are like 35% ICADE, 35% Complutense/CUNEF, 15% IE, 15% ESADE. The former two are extremely Spanish (I don’t think they have courses in English, someone perhaps can clarify), IE and ESADE are more international so larger parts of their classes go to London /other parts of Europe. I think Madrid has been better colonized in terms of EBs for IB than Italy has. Beautiful city, weather’s great and the Spaniards are more chill to work with than their counterparts in Milan, Frankfurt, Paris from what I’ve seen.

Frankfurt Kinda been said already, pay in line if not better than London when adjusted by currency. Most people are German/Austrian. Offices speak German, culture is not great in my personal opinion, there’s often the stigma that Frankfurt works harder than London just because. Still, along with Paris, Frankfurt is head and shoulders above Milan and Madrid both for sell and buyside. Citi and GS upping office sizes there should be interesting. Schools represented I would say are pretty even with the London schools and the German ones both sending lots to work in FFM. Pay from what I know is 70k for Analyst 1

Paris The French don’t like to speak English but they’re having to play by the rules more now that they’re gunning to overtake Frankfurt. BAML setting up its new EU HQ there could help with that (seems like for markets everyone from London that isn’t UK/US/ASIA client facing is being moved to Paris), think there’s a better expat community than in the other three cities. Have noticed there are more Small cap focused funds in Paris than anywhere else (could just be personal experience bias). Paris also helped by the fact that BNP & SocGen are bigger players in IB/Markets than their Spanish/Italian/German (Deutsche still very good for some desks). The two French banks are still very strong in the exotic derivs space, CA a bit less so but haven’t had too much to do with them. Rent in Paris costs an arm and a leg and so does going out to eat and club, city is beautiful and the weather is perfect. From my experience Paris & FFM offices pay the exact same so net-net your takehome is higher in the latter because COL is much lower. Schools from what I’ve seen is your run of the mill French schools. You can get around with English for people in the sector but will be harder in the day to day