Hi all - was extremely fortunate to receive SA offers a handful of firms and I've narrowed down my choices to Jefferies and TPH and am interested in learning a bit more about the deal flow and culture at both groups. For context, I'm interested in Energy (and potentially P&U) IB right now but I'm not sure if I want to be in the space for the long-term. Also not too interested in buy-side although I'd like to keep that door open for now.
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Congrats on the offers - both are great places to start your career if you're interested in energy. Jefferies and TPH are both similar in that their deal flow tends to be driven by upstream A&D, although both are quite strong in midstream and TPH also has strong relationships with the supermajors, which is on the rarer side for a boutique in the space. Both groups also handle some ESG-related deals in Houston, which is quite different from most groups which tend to have energy transition based in NYC, so you'll be able to get exposure to that side at either group. Deal experience wise, the two places are arguably the strongest non-BBs in the space and both are off to a strong start for 2023, but it should be noted that you won't be getting much RX exposure at either place (all TPH deals and I believe all Jefferies Energy deals in RX are run out of NY) unlike some other independents down in Houston. Culture-wise, Jefferies is tough, and back when I was still in Houston a few years ago TPH had one of the better cultures down in Houston, although things may have changed since then. If you're interested in mobility/potentially switching coverage groups, TPH definitely takes the cake over Jefferies - know of several friends over the years that have been able to switch from TPH to PWP even for SA -> FT and PWP's traditionally encouraged internal mobility, whereas the process can be a bit more tough at Jefferies.
Neither group is currently active in P&U
that sits in NY for Jefferies
PWP has a separate team for power (poached new MD) - not sure if they’ll want to use houston juniors on that team
Both groups run some energy transition out of Houston though if that's what OP is interested in.
That’s not power
Remember seeing TPH running a sell-side for a power plant last year actually.
Believe that TPH was also on the Westinghouse deal (although I think that was mainly handled by TPH Calgary and PWP LA).
If it makes you feel more prestigious, I got sd at Jefferies but not TPH so TPH must be more prestigious
Both are strong groups on the deal flow side, would make your decision based on culture. Anecdotally always found the TPH folks to be a bit more chill and the Jefferies folks to be a bit more on the intense/hardo side. Also fwiw TPH has the nicest office I've ever been in.
Jefferies Houston is still a very sweaty and rough place, even by Houston standards. Personally would go with TPH.
Just got first round for TPH. Any advice on technicals or behaviorals?
Go TPH
TPH
People keep talking about the TPH culture like Bobby and gang are still there. Plot twist, they aren’t - the culture has deteriorated and frankly the deal flow has, too. They were on the EnCap OVV deal last week but that’s been about the extent of it recently for them. It’s an extremely bloated team and the face time culture is real. An intern last summer didn’t get a return because he wouldn’t stay until the wee hours every night even though he didn’t have anything to do. If PWP goes through layoffs there’s no way TPH goes through without a significant impact. Also, side note but a TPH analyst I was working across of was still using VLOOKUP lol.
On the other side, Jefferies has been on a roll and has continued being one of the best banks in energy IB. I don’t think there’s a better bank to work at in Houston for the reps (maybe RBC). The exits are really great too (in the most recent class there’s people going to Carnelian, Quantum (multiple), Sixth Street amongst others. Also know of at-least two people that had a 100% interview to offer rate in PE recruiting. Pretty sure they also send an analyst to NY to go join the LevFin group based on what friends have said. I don’t think it’s a secret that the hours are bad but honestly
Would rather work those hours than sit around doing nothing at TPH with the face time culture.
Wasn’t TPH also in the Whistler pipeline deal a bit back? Quick league table pull shows TPH at 7 days so far this year and Jefferies at 6, with TPH also ahead on deal value, so hard to say that they’re not keeping somewhat busy.
Don’t know which league tables you are looking at but the league tables I have in front of me has Jefferies ranked No. 1.
Second this, and if you are interested in being in Energy IB long term, don’t think there’s a place more lucrative than JEF HOU.
Definitely a JEF corndog - All of TPH's 2022 SAs received offers. Other lies in this corndog's post...Up to you, OP, JEF's culture is summed up in that BS post.
Anyone who's claiming that Jefferies has a better culture than TPH (even though TPH's culture has degraded from 3-4 years back) is either a Jefferies shill or a prospect who bought the shills' messages. Jefferies Houston is still absolutely brutal, and you will not make it more than the standard 2-year stint here unless you have a certain personality type.
Associate at Houston BB who has no horse in this race. Not sure what "AnAlYsT 1" above is talking about, TPH is very well-known for having great deal flow and exits in Houston and in NY infrastructure. I know TPH is in office 4 days a week, so there can't be a huge facetime culture... heard at JEFF you need to show up by 9 AM everyday.
I am biased against JEFF though, their folks are some of the most unpleasant people I've ever met, wouldn't hesitate to throw you under the bus if they had an opportunity to, overall on par with JPM. Best EB cultures in Houston are TPH, Piper, and Lazard.
Simmons an EB now?
Who cares, this 'who is an EB' debate is something only college kids care about
Spotted the stealth Lazard houston associate - nobody takes them seriously
It's true that they have one of the best cultures in Houston though.
Lol ar needing to be in office at 9AM. I know people that are working remotely at Jefferies Houston permanently and also folks that don’t come in until 11am at the analyst level. TPH literally has a demonstrated face time culture.
Jeff has a bigger name compared to TPH (outside of Houston) and name can be leveraged in certain situations and useless in others. That being said, it really depends on your specific goals.
If going to B-School I would say Jeff
If going to PE in NY then Jeff
If Energy PE in Houston I would say TPH
If staying in Energy IB I would say TPH
If looking to lateral out of Houston I would say Jeff
If looking for easy (or at least easier) 2 years I would say TPH
Everyone here is overcomplicating things. Both are great and easily amongst the top 5 banks in all of energy. You really can’t make a mistake between the two of them. I would take Jeff personally but that is simply because of my career goals.
Worst post in this thread. TPH is part of PWP which has a much better brand than Jefferies - I would wager the people are much better culturally at TPH
I really hope that you don’t put PWP on your resume if you work at TPH lol, it sounds like maybe you do. That’s like saying you work at Google when you’re employed by Fitbit.
Outside of Houston and Finance very few people know about TPH. A lot more people outside of Finance recognize Jefferies’ name.
Also a quick LinkedIn search shows that many more Jeff people place into M7 than TPH people do (notice how I didn’t say PWP)
Can say firsthand that this is very inaccurate. TPH has much better B-school placement than Jefferies does, and is also much better for lateraling out of Houston because PWP's internal mobility is miles better than Jefferies. Both are about equally good for buy-side placement (top of the line for energy funds). TPH's culture is much better than Jefferies and imo makes a career there much more sustainable, but Jefferies has its own benefits for career IB in having a great energy LevFin franchise.
When did you get your jefferies offer?
Don’t think it’s a comparison between TPH and JEF.
Deal flow: JEF
Pay: JEF
Energy Exits: JEF
Culture (and this is where I’ll get heat so will touch on this below): JEF
The only thing TPH will be better at is maybe lateraling internally to NY
What people get wrong about the energy group is the fact that the hours are what they are due to the deal flow. There aren’t sharp elbows (no bucketing at analyst level), it’s a collegial environment and the juniors are really close. TPH has the hours because of the face time. If you look at the deal flow, over the past 3-5 years, Jefferies has TPH beat (specially given Jefferies does a lot more undisclosed transactions). Obviously with a lean Junior team, the per capita deal flow is that much bigger. That’s why the hours suck. Not because the seniors want the juniors in the office every day. JEF literally turns down so many bake-offs because it gets conflicted out of the processes. If you are interested in energy, I don’t think there’s a better shop than JEF - top upstream and midstream teams, pay extremely well for top talent, and want you to stay, but if you don’t then you’ll get the best exits.
Definitely disagree on the pay and culture font - the environment at Jefferies is only "collegial" in the sense that it's a bit of an "us-against-them" mentality between juniors and mid-level people, and because of how tough the hours are. Most of the juniors are more on the intense and introverted side compared to a lot of other banks and there isn't as much genuine friendship at the junior level. I've heard from friends and my roommate who works at TPH that it's the opposite over there - juniors are actually genuinely close. Also, Jefferies is very much haves v. have nots on comp front, especially as you go up in seniority. They have a few guys who make absurd $ - probably the highest paid at their position of any bank in the world and that is not an exaggeration. And when they recruit they like to throw those numbers around (which is annoying when recruiting against them). But that is a very tiny crew and is definitely not indicative of the group as a whole. Something to keep in mind is that the Jefferies Houston team is huge, and when you factor in all bankers + the technical crew there's a lot of heads sharing the comp pool (which isn't necessarily as large as you think because the OG crew takes a big cut and Jefferies often proposes fees far lower than what other banks do).
I don’t know - maybe you didn’t have a good experience but I would say I am genuinely friends with my analyst class. Many of us got offered pay packages that were extremely lucrative.
I am willing to wager TPH has a much lower $/head figure. They have so many offices that don’t have a lot of deal flow and just so many seniors to feed. Doesn’t matter if Jefferies has a larger headcount if we still make more on a per capita basis. While it’s true that folks at Jefferies get paid extremely well, it’s not limited to a tiny crew (unless you count a majority of the seniors as part of that “tiny crew”). And when I say seniors I don’t mean MDs, I mean there are VPs making millions and analysts making maybe the most on the street.
Lol what TPH definitely doesn't have much face time (source: roommate works there and is almost always back home before I am)
Whoever is saying that TPH has facetime culture is incredibly misinformed. The office is nearly empty by 6 pm minus some analysts and associates who like to be in the office.
Is TPH really that good? I looked at the website and they have some good deals, but doesn’t seem like an insanely active practice, but maybe that was just 2022. Looks like they had a better 2021, although so did everyone, right? I interned in O&G banking back when CS and Evercore were good, so maybe times have changed and TPH was good back then and sure they’re good now but are they really that much of a powerhouse? Same with Jefferies, I never felt like they were a huge powerhouse and the BBs + Evercore did most of the big M&A deals back in 2015-2018 era.
https://tphco.com/transactions/
PWP and TPH are infamous for not posting a lot of their transactions on their sites, and when they do, they do so in the most random method possible. It almost feels like whoever's running the site logs on once in a couple of months just to throw a dart at a board of deals to decide on which deals to put on and which deals to not put on. Briefly looking at the websites, TPH doesn't have Whistler Pipeline from a couple of months ago (which was a pretty big deal) as well as a couple of other large transactions from 2022 (ex Westinghouse), and PWP's site is even more haphazard (no Estée Lauder/Tom Ford from recent deals and they've only posted like 1/10 of their pre-2021 deals on their site).
Lol TPH and also PWP's websites are shit. You'd think that whoever's running BD would focus on keeping transactions up to date, but for some reason PWP and TPH don't really seem to care about maintaining their sites and especially seem to leave off some big deals (the $8B Westinghouse deal for TPH, the $13B Altria/Juul deal for PWP, etc). TPH was never
Also, Jefferies was the shale powerhouse back in the day and got on some mega-deals (remember Anadarko/Occidental?) but has definitely dropped off a bit in the large-cap space since.
ITT: A couple of Jefferies juniors dying on a hill shilling for Jefferies against a bunch of other bankers including another Jefferies banker who has a more jaded view.
At the end of the day both firms are great and are the 2 best non-BBs on the street that pay higher comp than most other Houston groups (lol at the comment above no VP at either group made millions this year), have good deal flow, exit well, and OP your decision should 100% be down to culture. Jefferies has traditionally had a very rough culture, and while things may have improved, I can guarantee you that based on how much I interact with the office a lot of the drivers of that rough culture are still around and acting like a-holes. On the other hand, TPH has traditionally had relatively good culture relative to street, but with the founders retiring that very well could have changed. It's up to you OP to have more conversations with people at either firm to get a good feel for culture.
Let this thread be a de facto datapoint on oil and gas deal activity in 2023 - holy hell some of your juniors are complaining about league tables and firm websites
Was about to say lol this thread was pretty comical, these mf's are willing to put their mothers life on the line for Jeff/TPH. Everything is bigger in Texas i guess.
I would say these are pretty different shops. Even with all the changes TPH tends to have a more Texas frat culture/staff than Jeffries which comes off as vampires sitting in windowless data rooms with Walgreens style lighting.
TPH work product is all over the place, there’s no consistency in their decks or models I’ve found. I think TPH declined in status significantly over the last 5-7 years, that includes ER and banking. Jefferies is extremely consistent and seems to hammer out stuff like clockwork.
TPH would prob be a better experience but the exit opps are going to be all over the place. Fwiw I would take a kid that was trained and survived Jefferies over TPH for buyside recruiting all things being equal otherwise.
What are your thoughts on Goldman Houston btw?
At TPH, you are free to work from home in the evenings. Several married analysts who actually eat dinner and spend time with their spouses. There are a few grinders that choose to stay in the office until the wee hours of the morning. Office is the nicest in Houston as well.
Can’t speak to Jefferies.
Can I ask you about your interviews for TPH? Going through the first round right now.
Can I ask you about your interviews for TPH? Going through the first round right now.
Can I ask you about your interviews for TPH? Going through the first round right now.
Ex-Jefferies (not Energy, not Houston, but knew a few people from the Energy team).
Generally quite an asshole culture iirc.
There were a few very nice people but I believe they all left
Jefferies as a firm has not gotten better over the years, if anything it seems to be getting worst
Re: P&U, if that sits under infra, a couple of years ago their entire infra team got poached by Cantor. Idk if they rebuilt the business since
have heard TPH works 7 days a week, no recurring protected time
Lol that's just false - my closest college friend's at TPH and he's definitely able to do things outside of work more often than I am (case in point, I'm still stuck working while he's at a watch party for the Lakers game).
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