Goldman Sachs - Classic M&A Model vs Other BBs

That really just depends on the kind of deals being brought in, not on whether you have an M&A group. If you’re at RBC, where most deals are just debt deals, then you’ll be working like 70-80% on capital markets and 20-30% on M&A (not including pitching - just active deals). 

At a place like Goldman/MS/JPM you’ll be doing like 50-70% M&A and 30-50% capital markets deals. At independent advisors (like Lazard and Evercore) you’ll be doing like 90% M&A because they have no balance sheet to lend from (and it’s why everyone touts them as being the best place to be on this website). 
 

Having the outside M&A group has nothing to do with the type of deals you’re doing - it has everything to do with who runs the model and who’s doing the qualitative deliverables (like CIMs or market overviews). For example, the tech group at CS will still be working on M&A deals - the only question is whether they’ll be running the model or if M&A will be running the model. Typically it’ll be sent to the M&A group to do, but usually the tech bankers can also take it on if they’d like instead. At Goldman, Barclays, etc., industry groups run the model all the time because there is no designated M&A product group.
 

That being said, it’s *extremely* important to understand that M&A bankers don’t ONLY work on intense and fascinating M&A/SOTP/etc. models. Sometimes they’ll be staffed on deals where they just do the crappy work that coverage doesn’t want to do because the deal is highly specialized and they don’t have the expertise necessary to run the model (like in FIG, some healthcare deals, etc.) So while they are usually running the model and gaining those sick skills that everyone talks about, they also sometimes have to do the work that nobody else wants to do.