Industry and Product Groups
I would appreciate it if someone could help me form a clear image on industry and product groups.
From my understanding, product groups work with different industries but always do a specific thing. On the other hand industry groups work with a specific industry but do various things, such as M&A and IPOs.
1) Which one is it generally considered to be better part of? (ie. which one has better deals, higher comp., prestige etc.) I believe it varies with the bank.
2) Does each bank have a different selection of industry groups? I’ve only heard about five of those (TMT, HC, C&R, Industrials and FIG). Are there more?
3) How does one get placed in a group? Do they get to specify a preference or is it random? Are people just placed in the group they were SA at?
4) How do exit opps compare for different groups?
Thanks a lot in advance for taking the effort to reply!
1. Depends on if you prefer the product or industry. In terms of exit opps it generally depends but M&A and LevFin usually place the best in PE followed by coverage teams that do their own modeling followed by coverage teams that don’t do their own modeling followed by DCM/ECM. This is extremely bank dependent.
2. You missed Natural Resources, Power & Utilities, and Sponsors
3. Banks have placement processes where incoming interns are given a span of time to network with each team. After which the interns each rank their top teams and the teams rank the interns they want the most. HR will match accordingly.
4. Answered this in 1
Is it possible to change to a different group once you are assigned to one? And how do you do that without creating a bad image for yourself?
It's possible, but it's more common to stick to one group. How easy it is to move around depends on the firm.
It's also worth noting that some firms don't even have all these groups. At many boutiques, analysts are expected to work across both coverage and product groups (aka being a "generalist"). Therefore, an analyst at a boutique might be staffed on a tech deal and their next deal could be a consumer deal.
Some of the other coverage groups include financial sponsors, real estate, and natural resources.
Prestige, as you mentioned yourself, depends on the firm. Some firms have a very strong TMT group while others might have a strong healthcare group. It really depends. The strength of product groups vary by firm as well. For example, HL is particularly well known for restructuring.
You either apply directly to a group or get a platform offer and get matched after you sign.
Which group you should join depends on where you are hoping to go after banking and what your interests are. In general, M&A/LevFin are considered some of the best groups for going into buyside.
The rest of your questions are answered by the people above but I wanted to expand on the definition of product groups.
Traditional IB Divisions will hold all industry/coverage groups, M&A, and sometimes leveraged finance.
The other product groups, ECM and DCM are usually from a separate applicant pool. At some banks lev fin is in Capital Markets, at some banks it’s in IB.
GS, Barclays: I believe CM and IB are same applicant pool/division
MS, BofA: GCM is a separate division from IB. I believe both have lev fin in GCM (def MS, not as sure about BofA)
CS: the IB division is IBCM, so capital markets is a different applicant pool (although most people apply for both since they allow this). Lev Fin recently moved to the IB side, so CM is only ECM/DCM.
Not sure about JP, Citi
CM is separate applicant pool for Citi, even though they recently combined IB/CM/CB under their BCMA umbrella.
CM is under CIB at JPM and they will put people in CM even if they've recruited expecting IB.
CS does this too
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