Houston: RBC vs. Boutiques?

For someone interested in the energy industry/energy banking long-term, would you recommend the dominant Houston boutiques (EVR/Moelis/Lazard) or RBC? RBC Houston has been doing great recently and obviously has a balance sheet to fall back on, while boutiques give more experience as an analyst/lean deal teams etc.

please give thoughts, thanks!

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Moelis and Lazard are not dominant in Houston lol. The only EB in Houston that's super strong is EVR. But if you care about overall name prestige, you'd probs choose any of those 3 over RBC

If you care solely about deal exposure within traditional energy than I would rank it as EVR >= RBC > Moelis > Lazard.

 

Moelis is top 2 - they are on EQT, ConocoPhillips, and have 50 deals in the pipeline

 
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They're usually underrated on here because people expected them to be peak Citi immediately which isn’t how it works when teams switch banks. It takes a while to ramp and even longer if you’re gunning for long cycle corp deals (they brew for a while). They’re probably like B+ tier now, would expect them in A in a couple years. 

S is still definitively GS and Jefferies with Evercore either bottom of S or top of A depending on time scale (good year this year but had a trough period for a bit) 

 

Also noticed their HTX O&G/P&R group was probably their weakest groups when recruiting out of ug, considering their HC, RX, and Industrials groups are among the best on the street. However, I’m still conditioned to believe any group at Lazard could lead to insane MF exits.

 

I lived in Houston and worked in corp dev at a super major briefly. GS, Jeff and EVC are the dominant players in Houston's IB scene. In terms of working at one of these firms, EVC is probably the best in terms of overall culture, pay, experience, etc.. They get worked hard but everyone I know that worked there spoke highly of the experience.

As far as your question goes, I saw RBC on a lot more deals than LAZ/MOE for sure, but RBC definitely got fewer mandates than EVC. 

 

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