Generalist Offices

Westcoasting:

Advantages:

• scope of experience
• you learn a lot of the skills from both coverage and execution side
• you get to explore what groups / industries really interest you
• you are pretty flexible when moving into PE if you are interested in a specialty shop
• The variety also does a good job of keeping you sane

Disadvantages

• you dont get as specific experience obviously
• politics is difficult as an analyst because you have several parties to please and often they are divided beyond the 1st year associate stage
• IF you do really love a product / industry - you won't get maximum exposure

To be honest the groups that do employ generalist strategies tend to have 5 or so verticals max and often you end up spending a lot of your time in one of them as senior guys start asking for you on deal teams. I enjoyed a generalist summer, chose what I really liked and went to a more structured full time process.

Thanks that was very useful.

If I can pick your brain a bit more, can you expand on the "politics" part and what you mean by "divided beyond the first associate stage"?

Also, what do you mean by "vertical max"? As far as I understand it, generalist offices do not tend to cover many industries (maybe 2-3 I am guessing). So are you saying that even though it is a generalist office, you will be stuck working in the same industry group because the senior guys will ask for you over and over?

scotttwibell:

are very strong as well. Think of CS/UBS LA, Greenhill, Gleacher. They are very strong banks. However, you won't see generalist here in NYC since analyst classes are too large and it would be a nightmare to manage staffing. I'm not sure whether any other regional BB offices have generalist pool.

Why do banks employ generalist offices? It appears to me, but I don't know this very well, that it would create a "lack of expertise" in an area and product over 2 years because you are constantly working on different things.