General Assumption: culture in BB better than MM?
In my initial networking with analysts in MMs earlier this year I came to the generalization that they had better culture and were overall worked less which made MMs seem more attractive to me. However, now that I have networked with more analysts in BBs and talked to people in banking that I know personally I have switched my thinking to that generally, BBs have a better culture / not worked to death. I know this is very dependent on the bank in question, but as a very very general statement do people who are actually on the job believe this as well?
BB work less than MM imo. Much larger teams and way more resources. However, imo they also spend a lot of their time on useless stuff that doesn’t go anywhere. At a top mm and all of our pitches are competitive bake-offs and we’re winning well over 50%. Always staffed on at least 1-3 live deals. Don’t spend much time on fluff or idea pitching
do you mind sharing which MM you’re at?
HW
Jeez, my MM which has similar deal flow to HW has us regularly on 3-5 deals, which is obviously not a brag but points to how poorly we are over staffed. Culture here is worse than my friends at BB, but agree that the work tends to be more execution focused.
Idk how 4-5 deals is humanly possible
Actual question and not trying to be a dick. It sounds like working at BB is less work and (in theory) you get better exit ops. Sure you may not get as much experience but is there any reason to pick MM over BB unless you really liked the people/geography?
It has been a long time, but when I was at Harris Williams I won something like 70-80% of my pitches. Spent almost no time pitching and the entire time working on live deals, with almost no idea pitching or 'fluff.' Hours were intense, but almost all of the hours were dedicated to getting live deals done, and you could definitely go home if you didn't have any work to do. Sounds like things haven't changed.
While all the MMs are different, my (very dated) impression was that my friends at BBs largely did nothing from 9 - 5pm. They wouldn't get handed work until the end of the day and were then expected to crank through the night, which enabled some of them to come into the office at 10 - 11am. The difference at HW&Co. and most of the MMs is that the analysts are actually invited to participate on calls with the client, so you're often actively partaking alongside your Asc / VP / D / MD during the normal person working hours.
Modeling is also far less important in the MM, so you spend a lot less time cranking through models and a lot more time facilitating deals and organizing data. It is a different experience on a lot of dimensions and one of the reasons I preferred a MM analyst to a BB analyst when recruiting for PE.
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