Gordon Dyal Advisory Group Sole Advisor on $12B Novartis-Avidity Deal… Who the hell are these guys??
Saw that Gordon Dyal & Co. was the sole strategic advisor to Novartis on their $12B Avidity acquisition. Then I looked them up and realized the entire firm is… basically one office worth of people. Less than 30 total.
Trying to understand how that works. They are winning mandates that usually go to full BB or EB teams covering pharma. Meanwhile they look like a very small, very selective boutique. Is this just senior rainmakers with insane relationships from their Goldman days? Do analysts there get real deal work or do they get crushed because of how lean everything is?
I have also heard comp is really strong given the small team and deal sizes. Curious how it actually compares to BB and top EBs. Plus, if someone had the choice, would you pick this platform over a more well-known name for exits and long-term career options? A lot of them seem to go to hedge funds (Citadel, Millennium, Point 72) over traditional PE exits.
Would love some insight from anyone who knows more. The firm feels super under the radar, yet they keep showing up on massive transactions. Just trying to figure out what the deal is here and how one can break in.
All I know is that I interviewed a lateral that quit Dyal without anything lined up because it was so brutal
just like really bad hours or the culture?
He said he was working every day until 3-4am, including weekends
why the hell is this downvoted
This post was made by a Dyal analyst to hype his group up and his other dyal friends all SBed it
My roommate worked there. I used to get back from work pretty late (EB) and sleep around 2-3 am. He almost never got back before that.7 days a week, and he worked on holidays as well. When I started to go to gym in the morning, we went a month without seeing each other despite living under the same roof.The only proof of life I could find was the packaging of microwave dinners in the trash.
Small does not mean selective. Also wouldn’t pick this shop if you are looking to do 2 years and out.
The one guy I know made it a year and hasn’t worked since
Meaning he burnt out or made enough money not to?
Gotta be the former bro. My guy didn’t retire at 23
Least obvious self-masturbating post. Are you an incoming summer analyst or an incoming first year?
has to be a first year
Sure, Jan.
The founder Gordon Dyal was the Co-Chairman of Investment Banking at Goldman Sachs, so the setup is very similar to M. Klein & Co. They only chase megadeals leverating relationship the senior bankers made over the years and they typically close around 2 to 4 deals a year. That’s why you don’t see their name as often as BBs or EBs. They aren’t doing volume. They’re doing the absolute top end.
Meanwhile, Goldman or Evercore still close megadeals, but they’re also consistently working on smaller $1 to $2 billion deals and some middle market deals (i.e. Goldman Cross Markets Group). So those brands show up way more often even though the occasional deal overlaps.
Recruiting is mainly laterals from BBs and EBs. You might see a summer analyst here or there but there’s no structured pipeline. It’s relationship driven and the team is tiny, like basically one office worth of people.
Its a bit over blown. Gordon Dyal literally worked on a sub 1bn deal just this year. Given the current size they simply can only cover the upper end, but everyone has to reach down market no matter how they position themselves. They cant systematically cover the 1-5bn space which is one of the largest TAMs in M&A - they just dont have the manpower. I believe they only have 30 people.
Understand that it is a pitch heavy shop. A lot of free work for mega cap companies in hopes of landing mandates like this.
Not Dyal, but I think I can give a bit more color here, since I'm at a similar boutique, albeit a bit smaller than Dyal and less well-known.
Average deal size in recent years has increased to the upper middle market range, as we've shifted to prioritizing large-cap/mega-cap clients. We announce only a few deals a year.
We probably get lower compensation versus Dyal, but we're in line with BBs. Our hours are pretty great though thankfully.
Our MDs and CEO are former senior bankers at BBs, so we get initial clients through their connections, and subsequently, from word of mouth. I have never done a bake-off before, but maybe Dyal's strategy involves more pitching given they are a more well-known brand.
It's true that ~25 - 40% of our time is spent doing non-deal work for these large clients with the expectation of advising on deals when they arise (not guaranteed but it's very rare for the client to stiff us on a mandate if we've been actively doing work for them). Tasks can vary a lot, including things like activism defense, investor relations, etc.
We rarely do work for free though. In the majority of cases, we are under retainer, which gives us several million dollars a year of recurring fees, incremental to project fees, which we're satisfied with given our size.
The rest of our time is spent on actual deals, mostly buyside. It's just that on most deals, we end up deciding not to proceed or we bid too low to move forward. I've probably worked on at least 15 - 20 deals at this point in various stages, with a handful completed.
The client (being a large cap) often also has a corp dev team comprised of ex-bankers/ex-consultants, so they may sometimes take work off our plates, or they may not need certain "services". For example, I've done deals where we only did due diligence and no modeling, and vice versa as well.
On the other hand, they may also pile on a bunch of additional work modeling a million scenarios / strategic alternatives. It varies a lot. I'm guessing Dyal has some very demanding clients on retainer (or MDs that prefer throwing the kitchen sink at analyses).
Since the scope is not defined on retainers, the work can easily balloon into endless iterations and alternative analyses. I'm blessed to have an awesome MD in this regard.
In other words, YMMV widely at small boutiques like us or Dyal.
I think its a tricky subject
first of all, I have a frozen peak account with my main deck being made of level 8’s and whatnot. Levels don’t matter as much as the deck does. Another thing, try to ONLY upgrade the cards in your deck. That way you save coins, and also keep your exp low, therefore going against pretty bad people, or low level people. But my advice is to constantly battle and open chests. chests give a good amount, free chests are better than silver chests, golds are even better, but the best easy access chest is the crown chest. They are WAY worth it. And continue battling and winning for about 20 times. The gold from those wins add up to about 300 gold, and plus crown chest and other chest should be about 1000 gold per 24 hrs. Donations also help a lot too. Rares give 50 gold each so a clan with a lot of people in it should help a bunch too. and make SURE that if you have to leave or something, that your crown chest has at least 1 crown in it. After that, when 24 hours elapse, you can get 2 crown chests which is a LOT of gold. So make sure you are making the right “financial” decisions and upgrade the cards you need only in your deck. That’s one of the reasons there are level 5 people are in legendary arena. So as long as you are getting max gold every day and make the right decisions after a certain time, you’re going to have more than enough money for stuff.
Well if you look it up, they’ve done a couple deals for Novartis in the past. Senior banker likely had the relationship already.
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