Hot Take: The Optimal Staffing for any Deal is 1 MD and 1 Associate
The Dream Team:
MD: Brings in the deal. Provides high-level guidance on T&R schedule, buyers list, other admin tasks and gives a rough idea of what content he wants in the CIM / financial model.
Associate: Does what the MD tells him.
The Hellhole I Work At:
MD #1: Brings in the deal. Provides insanely specific requests on how to do things in the CIM / financial model.
MD #2: Never brings in deals, but he's been here since his Analyst years so he's protected. Provides insanely specific requests on how to do things in the CIM / financial model, that contradict MD #1's orders. Proves his value by requesting the Associate do additional work that the MD #1 didn't think to mention because it isn't important.
Director/VP: Fights to get a word in edge-wise with the two MDs during meetings. Corners the Associate when the other two MDs are busy because he knows that when they're all in a meeting together nobody takes his advice. But if he can corner you and force you to do 5 hours of work before another MD asks what you're doing and tells you to stop because it's a waste of time, he's having a good day. Often attempts to start a mini-project (fee comps, ROE analysis, etc.) but then realizes that it's too hard and/or that he can't do it, and then passes his self-assigned busywork down to the Associate to complete so he can take the finished product and present it to the MDs himself.
Associate/Senior Analyst: Fleshes out work streams for the four senior bankers above him that constantly contradict each other and themselves. Builds 100 models for every 1 model or presentation actually submitted to investors/clients. Hunts down wild-goose chase data requests from the Director/VP who is perfectly capable of using CapIQ himself. Defaults to what his superiors tell him to do yet is always to blame when the client/investor doesn't like the output. Typically gives the Analyst busy work to keep the Analyst our of his hair.
Analyst: Takes days to complete busy work given to him from his Associate (comps, single pages of CIM) and then realizes once he is done that the Associate has already done it anyway because he never actually needed the Analyst he just wanted to Analyst to go play somewhere and be busy while he does the heavy lifting.
Also noteable that buy-side deal teams are smaller! Once as an SA it was just me the SA, an Associate, and a Director and that was the whole deal team. It went much smoother and was very easy to meet as a group, everyone was on the same page, everyone got the same info during diligence, there were no conflicting instructions etc.,
Facts.As an experienced associate I'd say most of my analysts have been good though, aside from 2nd years who coast and a few bad eggs.
I'd say an optimal team is MD, associate, and analyst.
The worst are the directors/VPs that don't know what they are doing and don't have the trust of the MDs. They are terrified to ask their MDs questions and they don't align on the deck, because they know their ass would be on the line if they did and the materials weren't good. Instead, they dump all the work on the associate with little to no guidance, so they can blame the associate when the MD tells the team the deck is shit. These people literally go out of their way to derail the train.This has happened to me so many times and I'm fed up.
People who do no work themselves and create meaningless work for others are way too common on this job.
Too true. IMO there should only be two functions. Either A) You bring in business or B) You close out workstreams on business your boss brings in. If you aren't bringing in business and you aren't doing the grunt work needed to execute on new business, you're probably just in the way.
You're not wrong from the associate or analyst's perspective.
From the overall organization's perspective, they're perfectly fine if the junior team stays up late so that things are a tiny bit more efficient or a better overall experience for the seniors.
Based. As an Associate at a boutique, projects where it's just me + MD + maybe an analyst have been the most efficient, by far. I see how my girlfriend's teams function in a BB and it blows my mind how absolutely inefficient they are.
Glad my bank generally staffs projects with either one VP, one Director, or one Associate, with the occassional VP + ASO or Director + ASO for more complicated situations.
VPs who cannot transition to a D/ED who sources deals should not be in banking
SMDs who micromanage their junior MDs and lower that do source and run deals with the help of a junior should stop doing that
That way, everyone isnt on 10 deals at a time and things get done
100% this. My smallest deal team is the best. Very tight team and my MD just gives high level goals. On my largest team we get a ton of weird requests from the VP that take days of manual pulls. We iterate the same items forever and don’t present them
Never understood the need for so many bodies, for where i work always Director + Associate or Director + Assoc/Analyst if the associate is staffed on something else.
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