Is Guggenheim an EB?

A kid who I went to school with, who now works FT at Gugg, is insisting that our investment club update one of the slides to list Guggenheim as an EB in our recruiting information guide.  We currently have CVP, EVR, PJT, MoCo, LT, and PWP listed as EBs, and I personally do not consider Gugg to be an EB. Curious to hear everyones thoughts on if we should list Gugg as an EB or not?

15 Comments
 

Do it, you don’t want to hurt your connection or reputation by not including his firm

 
Most Helpful

Short answer is no. In practice, you won’t hear anyone above the rank of associate use the term “elite boutique” because this was ultimately a term popularized by this forum / recruiting guides to help differentiate between the top tier independent firms that had fundamentally different business models / scales than the bulge brackets. As a result, there isn’t really a clear cut definition of what makes a bank an “EB” as people have different criteria (league tables, deal size, exits, coverage, scale, revenue, fee/head, etc.)

Back when i was in banking (CVP/PJT) the label I’ve always used was “independent advisory firms to differentiate. In its truest sense, this would not include Guggenheim since they both have a balance sheet and a securities / sales & trading arm. 

All this being said, Guggenheim is a great platform that has some great coverage groups, pays well and on the whole exits quite competitively. The whole debate of EB or not is a WSO / prospect / 1st year special. In reality, most headhunters give Guggenheim analysts the same looks as those from most other high performing platforms, and if you get paid well while earning good experience, it’s a bit of a non-issue. 

 

Sure, GUGG, or any strong independent can be called an “EB.” No one outside WSO refers to these things as EBs, besides students. You’ll learn quickly that in FT no one really gives a fuck. You either work in a good group or decent group and will exit well if you perform well.

 

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