32 Comments
 

Either you don't work in banking or you're very misinformed. I work at a top MM and in terms of M&A or TMT, I would take Canaccord over Mizuho. Canaccord's deal sizes tend to be in the 100m-500m range with occasional deals in the 1-2b range, but the firm has decent deal flow in terms of tech M&A and TMT ECM. I have a buddy at Mizuho who's been trying to lateral for over 6 months now. According to him, he's not had the chance to work on any M&A deals in the past 2 years. As others have mentioned, Mizuho tends to primarily do debt deals.

I help run the lateral recruitment process for my group, and we would rather hire candidates with decent middle-market M&A experience over candidates with debt-focused deal experience. Although Canaccord is certainly not a sexy brand name, the experience itself is likely much better than the experience at Mizuho.

 

I second this. Currently having trouble lateraling as well. On junior level, type of work you do matters so much more than deal size

 

Completely disagree also I’m pretty sure it’s cgc petsky prunier after the merger. Mizuho recruits heavily at my school and I have several friends there. I can promise you one thing you will never see an M&A deal at Mizuho it is purely a dcm/corporate banking role. This is regardless of group. cgc might not be the sexiest name either but I know for a fact that they actually offer real advisory and you would be able to get some kind of mm deal experience.

 

I know Mizuho used to be predominantly debt but I’ve been told within the last 3 years they’ve been ramping up M&A. Typically if you’re staffed on let’s say 6 deals, what is the breakdown between M&A, DCM, ECM?

 

For Mizuho, you should know that this year bonuses were way below the street. People were furious because bank had a really good year. Mass exit from TMT group recently including an MD. Having said that, TMT is one of the best groups in the bank, more deal flow than most groups. Very active in IPOs but not many advisory M&A. Overall, the bank is aggressively pushing towards M&A. It could be a solid M&A place in the future but not this year

 

This is a European perspective, but hopefully still applies.

Prestige: Mizuho is a "lower tier" balance sheet bank. It sits beneath Nomura, HSBC and BNP, alongside and below the INGs and others of this world. CG is a little known boutique to many inside, let alone outside of finance. Therefore, Mizuho is the more prestigious in the traditional sense due to greater establishment with no meaningful differences in selectivity.

Comp: no 1st hand knowledge of either but intuitively both will be weak. Japanese banks are notorious weak payers for sure. Nomura underpay vs. other balance sheet banks even. CG has its own problems and have heard in Europe that bonuses were very weak and thats if you kept your job after the last cycle.

In total, I would decide on other factors than the two above. Like whether you want particularly verticals or specific exits and look from that perspective. For pure banking prestige and lateral potential to better banks, I'd got Mizuho. If you want to go to VC and cover cannabis or something funky and entrepreneurial maybe CG?

 

Bump. Is CG actually paying insanely well with good WLB? Why I have never heard about this firm yet they have a good MM TMT practice

 

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