Leveraged Finance - Two summer internship with JPM and GS

I got two summer internships with both JPM lev fin and GS lev fin - which one would you consider more prestigous?

Isn't the team's reputation more important than the whole bank's reputation when it comes to exit opps? What do PE firms think?

 
Best Response

JPM's group is much stronger, so if you know Lev Fin is what you want to do, JPM is a good place to be for it. If you perform well you can probably get placed fulltime into the sponsors sub-group within JPM SLF. If you're not sure if you want to do Lev Fin full-time or not, it might not be a bad idea to go to GS, try it out, and if you hate it then try to get a fulltime offer within GS in a different group.

Even if you do end up picking JPM and hate it, you'll still get your foot in the door at GS for full time interviews.

 

When companies need debt financing (for LBOs, acquisitions, dividend recaps, etc.), they can take out loans or bonds. If the company has bad credit (like Ford), its loans are called "leveraged," and its bonds are euphemistically termed "high-yield." The term leveraged finance refers to both of these products. (If the company is a good credit, its loans are "investment-grade.")

At JPM, there's a group called Syndicated and Leveraged Finance (SLF, as GameTheory mentioned) that originates, structures, and distributes syndicated loans (both leveraged and investment-grade) and high-yield bonds. SLF itself occupies an entire floor and is divided into multiple subgroups, usually by industry:

  • General Industries (mostly consumer, healthcare, and retail)
  • Tech Media Telecom
  • Sponsors (PE-driven deals and, for some reason, transportation)
  • Mid-Corporate (regional, legacy Bank One but often covers names with market caps in the billions)
  • High-grade (huge investment-grade deals only)

The Sponsors subgroup is not the only group working on sponsor-driven transactions (GI, TMT, and Mid-Corp all get their fair share of LBOs), but often in the other groups you'll have to work on refinancings and less exciting transactions, and exit placement can be harder because you don't get as much experience with complex deals (though PE departures are still possible and common).

On Goldman Sachs -- they're not a leader in leveraged finance by any stretch (even if they were named LevFin house of the year by IFR), but they do very well for a bank with no balance sheet, especially with more complicated sponsor deals. GameTheory's advice is solid.

 

By working there. I'm not sure how the intern placement process works, though -- it might be random from when I hear?

 

JPM has a CCM (Client Credit Management) division, where they manage the credit needs of their clients from M&A and the corporate bank. Does Lev Fin fall under CCM for JPM's case, or is Lev Fin completely different? I know that within CCM they have a sponsors team that is pretty strong. Are we talking about the same thing?

 

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