MM Healthcare
Which middle market firms perform the best in healthcare and biotech/biopharma in particular? Curious to get more insight into this.
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Career Resources
Jefferies
Houlihan Lokey was the top healthcare M&A bank in terms of number of transactions for 2020.
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yes but wouldn't go near that group unless my life depended on it.
Why? Are hours much worse than other MMs?
Agreed. With high dealflow comes shit hours, especially when the group doesn’t hire enough to keep up.
I am guessing this is super inflated by the number of fairness opinions they do.
doesn't count fairness opinions. they actually do more deals than anyone else, like 40+ a year last I heard
as others have said, the group works extreme hours and has struggled with turnover recently
It seems like I read that HL does the most transactions in every industry, what’s the deal?
HC services is a high deal MM volume year in and year out. Just maybe not WSJ headline sized deals in this industry vertical.
SVB Leerink might be #1 given how they've grown recently
Thoughts on Cain?
Jeff smokes SVB Leerink in this space, look at the league tables
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SVB Leerink
Cowen
Seconding. A lot of the work out of SF HC is ECM and they do more than plenty of it.
blair is very strong in hc. piper is as well, but more specifically in medtech
I think if you really want to be in MM Healthcare, find a group that has a strong culture/growth potential (promote internally etc).
Honestly can't pinpoint one bank to say it's the "best."
Also HC biotech/biopharma makes it different and eliminates some MMs heavily focused on HC services (Cain doesn't touch biotech/biopharma for example but gets a ton of flow for hospital systems/sponsor owned outpatient facilities).
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I think honestly all of them have decent internal/growth opportunities. Comes more down to culture. I do agree WB is very strong in HC.
Leerink is 100% the place to be for MM biopharma and not even close. Growing like crazy
I’ve been seeing Leerink closing several M&A deals past couple weeks. Looking really exciting for them.
Biotech / pharma: Leerink
Services / tech: Cain
Good mix of both: MTS Partners (but stronger on pharma side than services)
Other good names include TripleTree and Edgemont, but I'd say they're materially weaker than the above 3.
I’ve heard Tripletree is decent but Edgemont? I’ve heard awful things about them and their dealflow. They come recruit at my nontarget and I still don’t know a single person who considered working there
TripleTree > Edgemont any day of the week. I could vouch for TT as buddies of mine worked with them on sell-sides and I interacted with them before on a pitch/teaser. Great group of guys that are crushin it. Edgemont is garbage lol.
Surprised Guggenheim hasn’t been brought up?
They arent really considered a middle-market firm. They started a MM team, but I believe it is mostly tech at this point.
MTS, TripleTree, and Leerink are 3 top shops that have been killing it outside of HL, Cowen, and Jefferies.
Piper Sandler crushes it in Med Tech Devices and generally holds HC as one of their strongest groups.
How is Oppenheimer in this list?
Following
Following
Not sure why Piper isn’t being mentioned a ton here. They’re a relatively strong player within the HC space. Slightly behind Leerink / Cowen though.
Piper is definitely strong. Check out some of the senior bankers that sit out on in their SF office doing biotech. Culture though is a whole other question. Have heard of brutal hours over there + Minny being a back breaker too.
Collins is a f*ckin baller
SVB has been getting a lot of attention in the last few months (rightfully so). This could be a great spot for those looking at extended careers in banking. I've floated this out on other threads, but curious to hear what people's experience with recruiting (more so lateral positions) with them has been like? Have heard hours are generally long given the space but that culture is good. They've also started doing work in hc services too which will be huge for them.
SVB Leerink is extremely strong in the pharma and biotech space. Would argue they might be the best of these names in those spaces based on recent performance
HSBC
In regards to explicitly biopharma, Jefferies, Leerink, Cowen, and Piper are amongst the best. MM M&A for biopharma is basically none existent you're going to be doing a lot of ECM work. The sell-side space is dominated by Centerview and thats deals anywhere 1B+.
At those other shops you will also get to work on licensing deals as well. The reality is you don't need to knock down M&A deals to go to the buyside for biopharma; buyouts aren't a think all of these companies that sit within the 300M-8B space rarely have an FDA approved drug. You have to have a solid grasp of the science and how to value these companies; you don't need to know how to put together a merger model or a LBO.
People from healthcare at the banks aforementioned generally exit to growth equity, VC, and l/s HFs. I don't think any of these banks would say that they compete with HL for deals
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Follow, would be also really curious to hear the answer
Us
I just saw Triple Tree got acquired by Capital One
https://www.triple-tree.com/news-events/2021/october/capital-one-to-acq…
HL is an absolute menace in the market right now, heard they’re closing in on 45 deals this year.
JEFF (if we’re classifying them as MM)
Leerink
Cowen
Piper
Stifel
William Blair
Cantor
OpCo
I always forget about OpCo, but they are ridiculously strong in HC Services, particularly among provider orgs
Raymond James has a great working culture with their HC group based in Nashville.
Hasn't RJ had a ton of turnover of late in that office? Several MDs have left over the last ~3 years.
Which firms tend to do well in HCIT?
Piper and Blair
Blair, Ray Jay, Piper, Triple Tree, Cain, HW are the ones I see the most often.
Which geography? Us vs UK?
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