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Interned there in nyc and have to say, surprisingly great culture

 

Current Lazard junior here.

Agreed that the firm in general has a great culture with great WLB initiatives (1 protected weekend a month for analysts, hybrid Monday/Friday, month-long remote period (some rules around this and structure varies by group but really awesome nonetheless), month-long sabbatical for A2A associates). 

Hours are group-dependent and you will be busy but the people are honestly very nice / professional. Also being on top of 30 Rock is a cool perk itself given the location / view.

 

No protected for Associates though in general I would say a good work split between Analysts / Associates is 70% / 30% of the work, so you can get a little bit more buffer and flexibility as an Associate if something comes up on weekends. Would say most groups do a lot to avoid weekend work but sweatier groups might have it tough especially if there’s live deal work involved.

Of course an Associate role is higher stress since more it’s on them to make sure the work product is correct but that comes with higher comp and doing less of the actual grunt work.

Would say at LAZ at least, Associates / VPs do have a lot more responsibility vs BB counterparts from what I’ve seen due to the lean teams and lack of a pure M&A execution group for support on many of work streams.

Don’t know anything about Boston office so can’t comment there.

 

What groups do you think have the best culture and deal flow in NY overall? Heard Industrials is the largest group by revenue and headcount but not sure about the culture. Interested in Consumer and Tech as well

 

I think most people at LAZ are very nice and I can't pinpoint a group that is known to have a bad culture in terms of toxic people. Obviously going to be some not-so-great folks relatively in all groups but in general the firm is so small that there is discipline and active feedback that from what I've seen is pretty effective.

In terms of hours though, will say there tends to be discrepancies across the board, mainly correlated to deal flow. Industrials is probably the sweatiest and most active group, so will gain a great experience working on the best PubCo M&A deals in industrials. The trade-off is a lot of hours naturally which can not really be helped given the volume of high-quality mandates / clients.

Consumer follows a similar strategy of covering large-cap clients (vs. chasing sponsor sell-sides), but the sector in general is not as big or active as industrials. Hours can be long but the people are great and there is a lot of respect for weekends in particular. In return, the % of marketing work vs. deals won't be as deal-heavy vs. industrials.

We also have healthcare, which I would say is the other group that follows the same large-cap PubCo M&A coverage approach and works on very high-quality deals. It's a very large group so hours depend on your staffings, but heard very good things about the quality of the people and respect for your time (believe Associates get protected weekends in this group, which is not a firm-wide policy).

Tech does a bit of both large-cap M&A and sponsor sell-sides. Would say hours are pretty bad just by virtue of the types of deals (more sponsor sell-sides, which can be demanding and lead to blow-ups vs. higher-margin but less consistent / volume-heavy PubCo M&A that are only active when they are active. Depends on your interest but I think it'll definitely be more sell-side heavy if you choose this group vs. the three I mentioned above. 

An up-and-comer is Media, which started last year. Just hired a Partner at Liontree and some very high-quality sports folks from Guggenheim. Not as well-versed in media M&A but I suspect you'll get a lot of good quality deals coming through in the near-term (league-level franchises on both NFL and NBA and stuff with the conglomerates on the entertainment side) based on the past clients / mandates the MDs brought in from their previous firms. Team is quite small for now but very active so probably a great way to play up. Heard good things about culture.

Also heard good things about the RX group. Definitely on the busier side but the people are great for the most part. I don't have as great of an understanding of the RX product vs. M&A but probably a step-down from your EVR / PJT. Group was on good stuff like Rite Aid but mainly creditor-side vs. debtor. Will let others chime in here

Not sure on FIG, RE, legacy Telecom, other product groups. Heard RE / capital solutions have great hours / culture, in that the teams try to avoid unnecessary work and are generally very efficient (being with efficient people will make or break your experience so need to diligence this).

 

Not that I agree with anything he’s done, but I would say that guy is an absolute rainmaker with no signs of slowing down despite all the controversy. End of the day Lazard is a business and I think he’s probably going to be highly productive.

 

Was that ever confirmed? I know a lot of people at Lazard, someone else was shown the door a month later or so and blackballed with the rumor being that person made it all up to get back at taetle for something. 

No clue what the truth is, but it went from an analyst to a 30 year old VP to being made up and then someone was thrown out of the firm. 

 

 

The world doesn’t care if he slept with a random br*ad. Point is he gets the business done, so go cry. This is not the first time and won’t be the last time. You can whine if it wasn’t consensual which didn’t appear to be the case. Stuff like this happens all the time; he is a banker and not Jesus. 

 

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