18 Comments
 

Minneapolis is a pretty stacked city when it comes to MM and LMM. Piper has a good presence, other well known MM banks include: Lazard MM, BMO, Harris Williams, and Houlihan Lokey RX. You also have smaller banks like Hennepin partners, northborne, Craig Hallum etc. Another odball I would add is triple tree. They have a similar sized presence to Hennepin partners, but their mandates are solid MM / UMM. In addition to banking, there’s a fair number of corp-Dev teams and lending focused funds - mezzanine capital, distressed, hedge fund etc. Hope this helps!

 
Most Helpful

prospectivechimp123

I'd be curious to hear insight into both if possible. I've heard of NMP, Varde, GMB, and Northstar.

Varde doesn't really do distressed lending (or at least not that I am aware of), but does a lot of distressed investing or trading of public or large private credits. Castlelake used to do direct distressed investing and I believe does a lot of aircraft lending/leasing and other unique debt deals. 

Prudential - largest non-bank lender in town. Does a lot of mezz, but also large slugs of senior for middle market and large cap companies.

On the debt side, most these days are Mezz-oriented. 

Yukon is the largest mezz fund in the area and works on some highly leveraged deals with good sponsors. Good people, good deal flow and pretty good training.

Northstar - probably the second-largest fund. Great people and culture, do some good deals with solid sponsors. Seems to be trending in the right direction.

NMP recently moved out of Wells. Seems to be a solid group, but time will tell how it and NEP do given they didn't have to fundraise routinely before. Only raising $400 after a $1.2B fund isn't a great sign.

GMB - similar to Northstar, quality people, but slightly smaller checks on average. Long track record and should be around a while.

Northcoast - newer fund, spin out of Spell Mezz. Lower middle market, sponsor deals. Pretty good group and aggressively deploying capital.

Medallion - small mezz firm, seems to be active, but does very small deals, relative to others.

Convergent - similar to Medallion, but does a lot of non-sponsored deals too. Not sure how active they are, but pretty good people.

 

The analyst above said it well, but I'll try and get more specific. 

  • Piper - the best and biggest name in the TC b/c HQ is there, and lots of HC is run out of MSP. Most groups have solid deal flow, but are incredibly sweaty (see HCIT, Medtech, Industrials).
  • HL - right up there with solid Rx and Industrial (mostly distribution) coverage.
  • HW - office is performing well, but only Consumer is based in MSP. Office is up to at least four MDs, maybe more IIRC. Lots of Food & Bev deals, but also some broader consumer. Good training ground.
  • Laz MM - shrinking at an alarming rate. Still a couple of MDs in Industrials and Business Services, but tons of departures or retirements without refilling. Food & Consumer was a pinnacle, down to one or two MDs in the office now.
  • BMO - surprised the office is still around. Never hear or see this group do much and all of the MDs left after GHF non-competes ran out to form Northborne Partners. I think they poached a few VPs or Ds too.
  • Hennepin - old Lazard MM predecessor guys. Do some good deals, some shitty LMM ones. Very active and tons of MDs. Looks like they've hired out the junior team more, but was very sweaty at one point b/c of the lack of staffing. Seems like a fair amount of turnover. Some of the younger MDs and Ds are good people.
  • Northborne - mostly ex-GHF guys as mentioned above. Seem to have grown quite a bit over the past few years. Similar to Hennepin, do some smaller deals and some nice, larger ones. Decent culture from what people say in terms of WLB.
  • Triple Tree - started out of MSP so most MDs still sit there, but you'd think with Capital One owning it, there will be some exits in the next couple of years and I could see it becoming more NY-centric. 100% healthcare IT and services and plays well in the MM and sometimes UMM (most of the really large deals are cos, not where TT is the lead, but still good exposure). 
  • Craig Hallum - never hear or see them on the M&A side. Capital markets heavy shop that focuses on smaller companies and shitty follow-on offerings.

    There are a few smaller shops that do lower MM deals too (Madeira, Cherry Tree, Franklin) and the rest are mostly business brokers (True North/Sunbelt, Quazar, Sealed Bid, Calhoun, Aethlon, Tamarack).
     

 

This guy definitely works at Piper and is insecure hence why he shits on just about every other bank in town on all of his posts. MN has a variety of other banks that do quality deals. There are a bunch of inaccuracies in his comments.

 

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