How's Santandar and Wells Fargo Doing Post CS-hires?
I read that Santandar and WF took a lot of the rainmakers at CS, either more or equal to the numbers taken by UBS. UBS has often been talked about on this forum with the consensus seemingly being that they have seen minor M&A improvement and a fairly large LevFin/Sponsors and ECM improvement in terms of product. I wonder how WF and Santander are doing especially since they took a lot of the CS sponsors team, seemingly one of the strongest sponsors groups in the street.
WF and Santander are both doing shit. CS seniors are heavily regretting their decision right now and heard many are looking to jump ship to any of the BB's, good opportunity for hiring in a few years once the guaranteed bonuses for those seniors from CS dry up/
Source?
The source is CS people who made the switch. The bank name is simply not very strong and it has led them to winning nothing except rights on some leveraged loan deals, no actual leads. CS sponsors often won deals because of their strong acquisition financing and for that to work in terms of building relationships for later M&A, you need to be leading the loan process/being lead-left which WF or Santandar simply isn't getting. UBS sponsors also hired some MDs and those MDs have seemingly delivered more at least compared to WF and Santandar ones looking at how much UBS has shot up the rankings in the leveraged loans and sponsor-backed activity space when compared to WF/Santandar's lack of activity there.
Not at Santander/WF but have school friends at those firms (ex CS). They told me that things are slow (like you stated) but sponsor activity as a whole is still in a rut. The expectation is to lean into previous CS relationships with sponsors when rates drop (hopefully) in the next 18 months. I'm not in disagreement with what youre saying, activity is slow for Santander/WF based on league table/lead lefts. I dont think youre being entirely fair though. It would be justified to evaluate both firms in the next 18 months and see where they stand. Both Santander/WF snagged hard hitters from CS at least in West Coast offices. Both banks also snagged coverage bankers from across the street at other firms. Cut them some slack lol they basically started from ground zero what do you expect
I agree to the extent that yes deals often take longer to materialize than the few months it's been. I'm not at all convinced that sponsors' activity hasn't been much, sponsor-backed companies have been refinancing like crazy these past few months, big market right now for leveraged loan refis and re-pricings(most of sponsor banker activities). The LBO market/acquisition financing has been in a bit of a lull, but that's been the case for quite a while now and there's still tons of leveraged loans activity happening overall with refis and repricings as investors have to deploy capital.
I am also evaluating these firms concerning growth compared to UBS, which I think is me being as positive on these firms as possible because I am merely comparing them to a counterpart who benefited from the same tailwind(lots of senior hires). I think both banks probably got fewer senior hires than UBS but they probably got bigger names than UBS did. UBS has seen massive levfin/sponsors activity and has been on several billion+ + dollar lead lefts just this past month with their ranking in single B loans(the best proxy for sponsor activity as 95% of those deals are sponsor-backed and that's where most sponsors deals happen) being either top 5 or 6th in the Americas. This is a huge improvement; Santandar/WF hasn't seen any such jump, which brings me to question how the firm is doing. I think I am being the opposite of unfair and am being overly nice towards the firms.
I also want to note in regards to WF, their overall lev fin rankings are extremely misleading as they are typically on the right, when you look at their lead-left deals they basically have no big ones. The seniors who jumped to UBS have seemingly been able to bring their relationships and thus lead-lefts to the firm, I find it shocking that the WF/Santander seniors haven't especially given how aggressive WF can be/is on loan structures.
Edit : Why am I getting a downvote? Go check deal logic league tables people.
Refis are going through the roof rn. Also Santander LA is doing very poorly even with Davidov and Decker
Horribly, which is pretty surprising
Not surprised at all. Banking is all about brand and reputation. When you're used to winning deals based on the CS brand name and step down to Santander or WF, why would it be surprising that you're not winning as hard as you did at CS? Similar things happen when GS or MS MDs step down to lower tier shops and are baffled why they aren't winning mandates left and right as they did prior.
You’re right. Let me rephrase by saying I’m surprised by how poorly they’re performing on an objective basis, not by the fact that they’re doing far worse than prime CS (which was to be expected).
Second year analyst who jumped ship to WF/S with the rest of my team. Haven’t won a single deal since. Looking to lateral to UBS sponsors.
UBS sponsors are still doing worse than CS sponsors ever did, though obviously significantly better than WF or Santandar were. I do think the lateral makes sense though especially if you know a lot of people in the group. I just think if you want to lateral, why not shoot for a top 3 sponsors group(like CS Sponsors was)? UBS sponsors are at best in the top 5, and even that seems quite high. I am aware of how well they are doing this year in leveraged loans, but their M&A for sponsor lead deals is still nowhere near the top 5 and is barely top 10 for the year.
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bump
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I doubt any of these ppl are actually who they claim to be lol
Congrats on Santander! A quick look at LCD lead left deals/LevFin league tables will prove their points
Bump
How is junior level pay at these firms? Worth lateraling to, collecting a hefty paycheck, and coasting as a bookrunner?
Pay is street. Unsure on bonus, but if your expectation is to go to a bank in which you coast, I’m sure you understand there’s a sacrifice in bonus you’ll have to accept
Bump
any updates on this?
Wouldn't say santander is amazing
I believe Santander did some meaningful layoffs
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