Lifestyle of a Financial Sponsors Group Associate?

Seeing what groups are out there as I think about next steps. What is life like on a financial sponsors coverage team as an associate? Type of work..are you modeling LBOs? Working till 2-3am everyday like we are in general coverage?

Specifically at top banks like MS, JPM or even EB’s. Any insight helps. Thank you!

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Sponsors coverage at a BB vs an EB is actually quite different given the EBs don't have a balance sheet, so half the job of sponsors bankers is irrelevant and you focus almost exclusively on managing relationships with the sponsors and may run the LBO depending on the bank. 

At a BB, you spend a lot of your time on the leverage part of the equation in an LBO, running through internal committees/admin tasks to get approval for financing (which is extremely tough these days) as well as running the LBO on a given transaction. 

From what I've seen with my BB's sponsors team, particularly at the associate level, the hours are generally much better (typically out before midnight if not by 9pm) than typical coverage groups but are the same when in the middle of a live deal. Day to day, the nature of the work starts to become more focused on developing relationships with PE funds and understanding their businesses/portfolios. That being said, you still need to be able to run with transactions/models when a deal does come in as you would in a coverage team. You also get to work with all the other coverage groups as well as M&A and DCM/ECM which can be really interesting as you get exposed to every industry and product the bank offers.

 

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