26 Comments
 

asides from the obvious tragedy, pay is above BB, heard that culture was pretty chill but that there are some very tough stretches, step below Blair, HL imo

 
"CapitalistPig" @Everyone joking about the death of the summer analyst, you're all hilarious. Good job, guys.

It wasn't a joke. It's ridiculous that prospective monkeys are more interested in compensation and exit opportunities than being worked to death - literally. If any incoming analysts/SA read this thread I sincerely hope that they will apply elsewhere.

 

I can tell you about Lincoln in general from going through first rounds and talking to alum in the Chicago office. Really solid culture, everyone I met including an MD/partner was incredibly chill/genuinely nice, opposite of a sweatshop in terms of facetime/BS work/all nighters. Plenty of deal flow but the work is going to be more high level multiples type valuation rather than intense modeling. For all of those reasons exit opps are not fantastic in terms of PE/HF but they exist. Really good shop if you want to stay in banking though. If you're good they even may pay for your MBA if you agree to come back after and from what I could gather MBA admissions were excellent with plenty getting into HSW directly from Lincoln. Also options available to skip MBA and move up.

 

I view Lincoln as a solid volume bank with a strong culture. However, we don't need to spread false info about the size of the deals they work on. They rarely do deals >500m (just 10-15 total in the last 5 years across 600+ bankers), and continue to play below HL/Blair/Baird/HW. That is not intended to be a knock, but I don't want somebody to go in with misinformation. 

From my interactions, seems like a solid place to do a banking career if you enjoy working with more entrepreneurial business owners and smaller businesses and know that sell-side M&A is what you want to be doing.

 

Would echo this--they are taking volume on the lower end and run strong processes for these businesses. Nice people and growing quickly by poaching from more established firms. Positive outlook from my seat unless they grow too quickly and deals slow.

Backing up the above poster, and while Merger market data should be taken with a grain of salt, a small fraction of deals (~10%) with disclosed values of 100m or higher for Lincoln when compared to Blair/Baird/HW with more than 1/3rd of their deals fitting that criteria.

 

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