London: PWP/EVR vs. Mid(/Lower) BB (CS, Citi, BofA, Barc, DB, UBS)

London: PWP/EVR vs. Mid(/Lower) BB (CS, Citi, BofA, Barc, DB, UBS)

-> If you had to choose an analyst grad position, what would be your choice and why? (reputation, exits, pay, culture, all things considered)

31 Comments
 

Generally agree with you but I've got offers at one of the EBs and one of the BBs. Trying to muddy the waters a bit.

 

But depends if you like the culture for some of the EBs it's a bit love or hate, also depends if u can get the right people to like you or not, eg at my EB a few VPs/EDs like me and put me on all their best deals, while some other analysts are being shifted around and always work with different people and on the more obscure sectors / geographies. So its up to you to stand out and avoir the obscure Indian chemicals staffings, while I would think in larger BBs people will barely know your name So it's more random 

 

You lot are overstating EVR in London.  They do have a strong reputation and brand name but they don't pay higher/that much higher than other top American banks in London. Their dealflow is okay but for a while they were on MM and LMM M&A deals. If you want the proof, check out their transactions page and the HY1 2021 MergerMarket EMEA Deal Drivers report.

On the report you'll find Citi, UBS and CS in the top 10 but not EVR for most sectors. The numbers speak for themselves.

Not got much info in terms of culture, but I hear they are friendly / have a friendly culture and definitely not sweaty in terms of working hours. For the BBs it is probably more team dependent.

Still see EVR analysts and associates making good exits, I think HH do recognise the brand name.

 
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Lol thats not what I am saying. I am making a point, which is that maybe you lot are overrating EVR (which is why I am pointing out that your experience with deals will might be different there in comparison to other places). Deciding on which place is better isn't just based on deals. That is just one factor to take into consideration.

EVR probably pays more than UBS (which is why I also specified American banks) and probably has a better overall culture. I myself would probably choose EVR over UBS or CS but not over Citi.

 

My view is that US BBs are more or less equal to EBs depending on your preferences (M&A only vs cross product offering), pay may be 10-20k higher for EBs so coming out post tax at 5-10k, I would not make a career decision based on such a “small” amount of money.

I am really not a fan of evercore these days, they have diluted talent a lot by aggressively hiring and are really going down to do some small deals - not that it’s a bad experience, just up to you as to what you want to do.
PWP remains super selective (both for talent and deals they do) and has hired few more seniors, I really like how they approach things - i.e. don’t want to purely be a volume shop but wants to do big fee events deals (you work the same amount on big and small deals but in one case you make much more $$$ - so to make the same PnL you need to work less...).

CS has struggled recently so I would not necessarily take such risk, DB seems like is picking up again - levfin still doing good and some M&A here and there. UBS is nowhere it seems these days. 

 

For top PE exits only:

It is all much of a muchness in Europe, I would say EVR is the weakest of the lot tho. The only banks that really do have an edge are GS/MS/JPM. If you look at Linkedin/ListAlpha (the latter of which doesn't register EBs due to their size), BofA and CS seem to place slightly better among the BBs but that is very marginal. Note this data is backward looking by nature so caveat emptor. In general I would say in Europe if you are deadset on exiting, going to a BB (any of them) is always the safest bet, but honestly EBs are building out their franchise and reputation too in the region so I would imagine they are on headhunters' radars.

 
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