Good Sponsors Groups to Actually Work In (Not necessarily “best”)

What are some FSG groups that are decent places to work in? I see a lot of posts on top sponsors groups (obviously people talk about places like CS rip, Barclays, and BofA), but what about lesser known groups that have a good experience/semi decent rep? I don’t really care if they model or not, I just think sponsors are interesting to work with and fsg usually tends to be more chill.

I'm thinking places like international balance sheet banks or middle markets might fit the bill?

12 Comments
 

Good shout. Forgot to mention them. The thing is these top of the street sponsors groups run super lean, so it’s almost impossible to lateral in unless you have the perfect pedigree.

 

Some that come to mind are BMO, TD Securities, Wells Fargo, Nomura, etc. Generally you'll find that most balance sheet banks will do a good amount of LBO financing and that work can be meaningiful while also not as cutt-throat as LBO M&A which you may find at a shop like MS. Barclays is a blank check for a number of Sponsors like Apollo since it's a large part of their strategy in the U.S. would say it's a good experience but things might be a little different now with the bank headed on the downtrend.

 

Wells Fargo FSG is on the upswing especially since getting Malcolm Price

 

How’s Nomura sponsors? I’ve interviewed there for a diff group before but no clue on how their fsg practice is

 
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Any info on Santander fsg? Santander as a whole seems to be on extreme growth mode and has been poaching a bunch of cs and other bb MDs. Not sure if their sponsors group was affected.

 

not a bad LF/FSG team but fumbled the bag with CS FSG they lost everyone

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