At banks, do certain groups in IB generally receive a different compensation or hours worked. I know it varies by bank, but, for example do healthcare analysts work less than TMT but get paid the same? My understanding is M&A is the most prestigious and most labor intensive
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My opinion, and I know it's going to make some M&A guys a bit butthurt, but M&A is not nearly as good as it used to be, I'd much rather be industry.
1) Exit opportunities: statistically, you're not going to stay in banking forever. If you're a T&T or healthcare etc, you're probably going to move to one of your clients at a decent level. Guys in M&A, FICC, Lev. Fin have much fewer options on the way out. Sure they are talented and hard working, but have generalist knowledge of industry and specific knowledge of a very narrow area which doesn't have a lot of applications outside of finance.
2) Work experience: When I was at a BB, we really didn't like getting staffing from M&A, generally we found that the quality of the A&As was quite poor. They can't really model that well, as they don't have industry experience to make assumptions. Either they make ballpark assumptions for costs, or rates or some factor, and have no backing for it, or you have to hand feed them everything, which means it's just faster to have an analyst from your own team do it. Further, since they don't know the industry (typically) you can't get them to pull a buyers list, or look at interlopers. They won't know implications from recent transactions, or competing processes.
Don't get me wrong, they can run a process, and the more senior ones will have a special knowledge of asset tests or listing rules and the such, but I found that the skill set is so narrow they weren't that useful.
To actually answer your question about comp. Banks pay the same base across all IB, but different teams will have different bonus pools, and they will split them as they see fit.
Depends completely on who you talk to. If you are talking to PE guys, then the M&A skillset is highly valued given the execution and structuring knowledge you develop. If you talk to strategics, then often they will place a higher emphasis on industry groups given the deep sector knowledge you are forced to develop. Depending on the bank, you may find yourself in an industry group that is M&A focused. This is often the case at boutique banks, but certain BBs are structured in a similar manner as well.
I would say M&A within the finance community is broadly valued higher than many industry groups given that the skillset is transferable across sectors.
Now to answer your actual question. As stated above, groups tend to have the same base, but different bonus pools. When markets are consolidating and the M&A environment is hot, M&A groups are compensated better. The flipside is, during a dead year, M&A bonuses tend to take a hit.
Hope this helps