Follow-Up on BMO Layoffs: Can You Go Wrong with Technology IB?

All the threads on BMO eliminating their O&G group in TX and the future of O&G banking seem pretty grim given all the headwinds of EV boom, COVID, government regulations globally, and supply glut from Permian/fracking. Feel like it's exactly the opposite in Technology, where the COVID pandemic has accelerated trends of digitization, e-commerce, social media, etc. There's also been some threads on this site about "the next big thing" or what banking will look like in the future across different coverage groups.

When it comes to Tech IB, the conventional wisdom seems to be to avoid joining tech groups at anything but GS/MS since they have historically dominated the space. A look at recent data, though, shows BAML, Barcap, CS and even UBS all competing and holding their own for mandates, and some on WSO have already started to comment on this trend. 

My intuition says that a rising tide lifts all boats, and that any BB/EB making a serious investment in its tech group right now should be able to win mandates in the future given how large, diversified, and fast-growing technology has become. I very well could be wrong, and we could just see further consolidation. Furthermore, the number of VCs and Tech PE funds grows day by day, so from an exit opportunities perspective as an analyst/associate I feel like you have a ton to choose from.

To tech and non-tech bankers alike: What do you think? Will dealflow, promotion ops, comp, exits, etc be great for most serious tech groups going forward, or is it GS/MS or bust? If anyone has any data on this that'd be great.

Also not trying to throw shade at JPM/Q/EBs or whatever, plz don't turn this into a rankings post. Thx.

17 Comments
 

I think OP is misconstruing the context for the gs/ms/q or bust consensus. While I don't know how true this is, people bring that up specifically in the context of SF tech IB, of which, those three make up most of the large-cap tech m&a transactions in the region. Also, people seem to forget that TMT has the M&T portion which isn't as concentrated in those firms. 

 

Well tech is an extremely overvalued bubble industry that will eventually explode: 

-saas is a scam whereby they get mark/cucks corporate procurement to buy subscriptions for no reason instead of perfectly good one time pay software or internal development. Eventually this will drown p&ls and the tide will turn

-online ads are shitty and people will stop overpaying for them

-alibaba, amazon web services and Netflix are accounting frauds. 

-eventually venture lp’s will be burnt and revolt 

-Tesla and SoftBank will go bankrupt 

-tech Ib teams at bb’s put too much balance sheet at risk over the long term and overall risk adjusted return on equity through the cycle is too low. 

 
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This is such a dumb attitude. You know who was the lead advisor to Salesforce on the Slack deal? BofA. (GS & Q co-advised Slack, but that feels like 1 advised and the other is writing fairness)

"Tech" is so huge now that the firms are what GE and Ford were 30 years ago, and so there is a lot of work to go around, especially to large lenders with strong advisory like the big 5 BBs. The interesting difference to me is that so many tech firms are driven by hands-on CEOs (Benioff, Musk, etc) that the right MD with the right relationship will get put on everything. This is in contrast to the "feed the geese" mentality of spreading fees around to major lenders that gets followed when a CFO and corp dev team runs the show. 

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