Houston IB Firms Status Update

Bump

bump

I mean broadly Houston has been really hot this year. Exxon/Pioneer, Chevron/Hess, Oxy/CastleRock are all 10bn+ deals, as well as OneOK, Permian, ET, and Denbury all being part of multi-billion M&A transactions. There's been pretty broad consolidation in the traditional energy sector this year. As far as best banks, Goldman and MS have been on most of the deals above. TPH, Citi also good. 

How has Moelis Houston been? I saw they hire like 6 MDs from Guggenheim. Exclusive: Guggenheim oil and gas bankers leave for Moelis after mega-deal miss -sources | Reuters

Jefferies does quite well in Houston. It's too bad CS fell apart since they had a solid team back in the day; everyone there seems to have gone their separate ways and it's not like NYC where a bunch went en masse to Santander or Wells.

Pretty much all the bulge bracket names you'd expect, plus RBC and Jefferies. The former group head of CS Houston is now a Vice Chair at RBC. I'd keep an eye on some of the Japanese banks believe it or not since they've been hiring. Mizuho comes to mind for sure. Asian investors tend to give precisely zero fucks about ESG.

Edit: One thing I wanted to share. If you search on the forum, you'll find some negative culture comments about Jefferies. I have not worked there personally but know some friends who said it's not nearly as bad as what it was portrayed online and some of those comments may have been valid years ago but not anymore. That said, JPM Houston seems to universally get negative feedback as far as culture. I'd avoid JPM regardless of deal flow. Sounds like their group head is a tyrant.

We are chillin

There are dozens of threads on this. Goldman Sachs, JPM and Morgan Stanley have done exceptionally this year. Jefferies continues to lead the A&D space. Evercore has also had its share of the upstream pie and continues to lead midstream. 

There are a handful of smaller groups that aren't able to do much because of their size.