IBD after going Public
With Moelis going public this week I was wondering if anyone has stories to share about how the culture of the bank changes once public?
With Evercore, Greenhill, etc. in mind I'm curious what this will do to Moelis culture/motivation going forward?
Can't comment on Moelis, but I know that Lazard changed significantly (many would argue for the worse) once it went from being a private partnership to a publically traded company.
In what ways?
Every ex-GS partner I speak to contends that GS completely lost the "client is king" ethos and they swapped it for a "quarterly earnings are king". This meant that their client relationships transitioned from being a true advisory relationship, to a pure sales one.
I can see how that is happening. When one's sole focus is constantly growing earnings at ever increasing pace and beating the ever elusive earning (gues)estimates, it becomes a numbers game where volume is all that matters and one is only concerned with how can we do more of these NOW, as opposed to how can we do this better.
The GS IPO was a windfall for Corzine and other large shareholders at time it went public but it is not been good to the long term culture of what was once a limited partnership.
This same chasing earning mentality plagues many publicly listed companies, in finance or otherwise.
yes, I think it's retarded and could only be bad in the long run, but for most people on this board, i.e. very junior employees, I wouldn't worry too much.
One of my MD's started at Lazard in the pre-Wasserstein days. The stories he told... THE definition of a white shoe firm.
The only bank that still embodies that partnership ethos is Perella Weinberg. Joe playing ping pong with the analysts... Joe and Peter writing b school recs. Both of them still show up to networking events for analysts... and the entire firm's still on one floor over at the GM building. If I wanted to make a career out of investment banking today, Perella is where I would be.
And nowadays every bank is also an asset manager...
That's really cool I heard from a friend who works at Centerview that during training. Each new recruit is required to have a chat with either Effron, Pruzan or Chinn.
It would be cool if people still dared to put their name on the door like everyone once did...
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