Houlihan Lokey Restructuring--NYC
Anyone have any info regarding culture, comp, exit opps, hours, etc? I know they're really well respected in RX, but I haven't read much about the dynamics of the group itself. This would be for an SA by the way.
Far from the truth. Yes, many analysts exit to some form of distressed PEs and HFs as opposed to the vanilla kind, but that is more due to their own volition rather than limitations brought unto by the HLHZ platform. In fact, I know of several people who did RX HLHZ then went to Blackstone PE, KKR, etc.
HL is an OK MM bank with a strong RX business. However most people at HL RX do not exit to the top funds. When looking through wso posts on HL, people might start believing things that are not the case.
RX offerees' preference based on deal flow, comp, culture, and exit opps from my school seem to be: 1: PJT 2: Lazard/Evercore 3: Moelis 4: Houlihan 5: Rothschild
Houlihan/Lazard/PJT have the largest teams and highest deal volumes. Evercore/Moelis provide the highest comp. Though very few people get RX spots each year, so it's somewhat hard to determine preferences.
Bro, I think your caps lock may be stuck. Just a thought.
I hear that Rothschild exits are stronger. No idea about the other rx groups though
No, Rothschild is more of a MM bank imo & Tier 2 in RX
RX tiers are:
edit: w/o operational RX
In terms of the proportion of top-notch work, exit opps, etc. (i.e., not just total deal volume), the RX tiers are:
1: Lazard, PJT, HL, Evercore, Moelis 2: Greenhill, Rothschild, Jefferies, etc.
HL always dominates the league tables. I would not be surprised to see Evercore capture many of the highest profile RX matters when the economy turns south this time (as Evercore did during the last recession: "New restructuring league tables available" on WSO), despite having a smaller RX team. Alix, Alvarez, etc. shouldn't be on the list because they are operations consulting firms.
If you look at League Tables for 4Q 2014 and 4Q 2015, the top 3 players are consistently PJT, HL, LAZ. The other 3 players in the mix are MoCo, Rothschild, Evercore. It is silly too look at one quarter and declare which Rx practice is best. If you look at the numbers, HL does the most deals but that is attributable to executing more creditor than debtor assignments. If you look at either 2014 or 2015, you will see that Lazard does a few less deals (3-7) which makes sense because they do more debtor assignments. One of the impressive numbers to look at IMO is how PJT has quite a few less deals than HL and LAZ but still has a very high value indicating they land some excellent, high value debtor assignments and solid creditor assignments. Of course, as someone has mentioned before, Rx work can be quiet and hush hush, therefore the league tables don't say everything about performance. Nonetheless, you would be ridiculous not to put PJT, HL, and LAZ in one class (first tier) and MoCo, Rothschild, Evercore in another class (second tier).