London BB/EB exit tier?

I heard that in London PE exit tier is like: Tier 1: GS, MS, JPM Tier 2: Citi, Bank of America, Lazard, Rothschild Tier 3: Barclays, DB, UBS Unlike US, PE exit at tier 1 EBs such as PJT and Evercore is not even better than Barclays in UK because their business ( especially M&A) is not quite strong in Europe, and many buy-sides may not even heard about them. So in general, BB better than any EB except for Lazard and Rothschild in the UK. Source: one of the manager at a prestigious headhunting business for PE How true is the above? — I noticed that people are congratulating me on Lazard, but is Lazard that bad so that it cannot be in tier 2?

21 Comments
 

Given the conservative nature of Europe, BBs weight stronger in EMEA compared to the US, with management at more 'traditional' European large corporates (much more old-school compared to the more entrepreneurial startup culture fostered in the US) focusing on minimising financing costs and going with safer, well-known brand names, to justify to shareholders. This is reflected in average deal values, fees, and total deal values in Europe.

Given all this, would go:

Tier 1: GS (comfortably strongest here), MS, JPM

Tier 2: Citi, BofA

Tier 3: Evercore, PJT

Tier 4: Rothschild, Barclays, PWP

Tier 5: DB, UBS, Lazard

Definitely possible that EVR/PJT will catchup to Tier 2 and potentially even Tier 1 in coming years as especially the former has been aggressively hiring in the past 2 years, but based off current average deal size/fees, US BBs dominate here.

 

You can get any role from any of these banks but in terms of marginal benefit it seems about right. Lazard feels like to odd one out. Or simply an outdated view. They used to have lots of Carlyle exits as their European head came from there and was quite biased. He’s no longer there and Carlyle isn’t what it was in Europe so that’s less now. Think Lazard mostly does Corporate work now in the UK (if not almost exclusively).

 

Thank you. Then is it true that any BB exit is better than EB exit in London? Like if I have an offer from DB and then Evercore let’s say, which one should I choose to max the exit?

 

unfortunately, lazard has had no decent UMM/MF pe exits for the past few years. wouldnt even make a tier 3.

 

Lazard used to be better for placement back in the days (talking like +10 years back). Probably agree with the above today more up to you. Certainly a function of their profile of the analysts, the more corporate work they do, limited creditor engagements on the RX side etc. The recent hire from Moelis is going to be helpful for RX type of exits.

From what I can tell, the exits have been fairly good but up to you to make that work from the people I came across: Apollo, Carlyle, Bain Capital, Monarch, Paulson & Co, Park Square, Viking Global, TPG, Citadel, CVC, Cerberus and probably others

As always not speaking any European languages makes the whole thing a harder

"too good to be true" See my WSO Blog
 

Anyone have any colour as to why Lazard isn't doing well in exits? London team still does big deals 

 

for what its worth somebody I know worked there. got interviews at any MF, distressed and L/S he was interested in without any issues (all Tier 1). ended up at one on the list above. They seem to have 1-2 very bright / polished guys in their class always. I think in the class there are also some who will stay at Lazard longer or make a career out of it. and yes its very posh / british place still (work a lot with government, FTSE clients etc.) so not all just focused on tier 1 buyside exits for american firms. Also a lot of well connected people from wealthy families that end up doing other stuff / become clients of Lazard.

"too good to be true" See my WSO Blog
 

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