Moelis LA -- Business as Usual
First time poster, but thought you all might enjoy this.
A friend of mine is a first year analyst with Moelis NY. In addition to getting crushed himself, it appears little has changed in the LA office since 2008.
The analysts still place phenomenally. The second year class is going to Silver Lake (2), Carlisle, H.I.G., Apax, Centerbridge, Oaktree, and Onex.
It is still a sweatshop. Almost a quarter of the now second year class quit after one year. More interestingly, of the 10 summers, 6 received returns and none are coming back. That is a rare feat. (Apparently, there are a few VP's in that office who literally stay up until 4:00am alongside their analysts.)
Does the lifestyle justify the exit opps for you? Personally, there is no way I submit to that torture...
Kind of unfair analysis all round -- here are the facts. There were 9 interns in LA and 5 received offers as they were all great. Of those 5, 2 actually transferred to Moelis NY, so they're staying but in a different office because NY hours are much better. NY is much bigger - 20 to 25 analysts per year so obviously, not all will place into mega funds! (Same story with our GS, MS folks and we all know that). Yet, the placements in NY for Moelis are great: TPG, Oaktree, HIG to name a few PE funds, all the distressed debt funds due to their restructuring group, and some smaller PE shops. Some others were promoted internally to associate and were paid a handsome 175,000 signing bonus to encourage this behavior in the future. Moelis is changing its anayst identity from being exit opps whores to a mix towards ANYTHING you want to do. Yet, the opps are fantastic and you receive support for them if that's what you want. Given the scale of sponsor sell-side work Moelis does, this makes a lot of sense. In fact a summer analyst was placed into Apollo PE immediately after the summer...this speaks to the strength of the Moelis brand. Even the kids that didn't get offers placed into top banks for full time. Moelis also still pays the second highest bonus numbers on the street (after Centerview) and kids learn a ton from the experience. So its a great place to be...in whichever office location
Moelis is a pure nightmare, even by banking standards. There are plenty of shops out there with equally good buyside placement but slightly better work-life balance. At my b-school, 6 students interned at Moelis this past summer. 2 got offers but neither are returning. They were working till 3 AM daily during a fucking internship.
Does this mean Moelis might be more inclined to respond to my cold email since no one wants to work there?
They are definitely a busy shop, but their culture and approach to new business/deals is a bit different than LAZ/EVR/GHL/PWP/CV. In my opinion, it basically comes down to their DLJ heritage vs. the other boutiques which are largely more traditional/conservative (i.e. former MS/GS bankers)
1) Moelis is deal-hungry and they tend to pitch very aggressively for new business. This stems from the DLJ-heritage back in the day - they were the new kids on the block and built their business around areas the traditional white-shoe BB weren't as active in - lev fin/HY, sponsors. Note that they made a killing doing so. They are basically just following through with these same principles. This create a lot of work for juniors though. 2) Stemming from above, they tend to work on a significantly higher # of deals than the other boutiques, although a lot of these are smaller deal sizes. The other boutiques focus on a fewer number of deals, but their deals on average tend to be larger in size. From a junior perspective though, even a smaller deal can = a lot of work
Edit: To prove how intense the former DLJ was and how the current Moelis (basically legacy DLJ) is now, check out this infamous staffing memo from DLJ in 1994: //www.wallstreetoasis.com/files/DLJ%20Too%20Busy.pdf
Some folks here are focusing on distortion rather than stating true facts. DLJ and Moelis are not the same. Moelis LA and Moelis NY are not the same. Moelis in 2008 and Moelis in 2014 are not the same. Citing horror stories of DLJ to take a dump on Moelis is not a fair way to explain the situation. The fact of the matter is that in NY, the hours now are just like regular banking hours and the exit opps are still fantastic. Look at Linkedin and filter through data to verify that truth. Pay is still at the top of the street and there is still no better promotion package than Moelis if you want to do banking for a while. Calling Moelis deal-hungry, sweatshop, or saying VPs stay till 3am etc was all fair and true in 2008 but not even close today. Their restructuring practice (which is based in NY) is killing it even in this environment and like someone mentioned, Eric Cantor is their new wild-card. The firm has changed drastically for the better and people need to see that..or stay behind.
Let's dispel some myths here. Disclaimer: I have don't currently work for Moelis and have no reason for any bias.
1) Having long hours is very, very different from bad culture.
This is hard to understand for people who have not been in banking yet (quite a few on this website). But the basic idea is that the type of work + type of people around you determines your overall satisfaction with the company. Not the # of hours. To put this in perspective, imagine working 100 hours a week at a bank. One bank requires you to work on projects that are live (client has engaged and WILL BE PAYING THE FIRM). The other bank, you are doing market research and "preliminary discussion materials" about bullshit that will never even be used. Both 100 hours. Very different mindset. Moelis LA's work consists of almost entirely live deals. You are never pitching a client blind. Rarely anyone in the office has lost a pitch.
The people around you is also important. The Moelis LA office is an environment where you can wear casual clothes and dick around at 1AM while waiting for an email from your VP. You can't do that in A LOT of banks in North America. This probably means little to you now, but it plays a huge role in your overall happiness.
2) If you're obsessed with exit opps and success, you shouldn't scared of working hard.
I find it very interesting that people work their asses off to get into a good school, or network ferociously to land interviews, but are somehow fucking scared of working hard when it actually comes to the job. Some of the offices (GS TMT / FIG, LAZ, etc.) that get tossed around on this website work the exact same amount of hours as Moelis LA. And they have the best exit opps. Let's think about it this way:
"KKR wants the best candidate who have the best experience. Employee A works at an office where he pitched 3 deals and worked on one deal and closed zero. Employee B works at GS TMT or Moelis LA and has closed 4 deals in the exact same time period. Employee A has a good work-life balance. Do you really think KKR will ever hire employee A?"
You will find the average analyst out of Moelis LA to be significantly sharper than a kid from another bank from the sheer number of LIVE DEALS they do. Exit opps have a very direct correlation with amount of hours worked (except rare outliers). It just works that way.
3) Top analysts, at any office, will be crushed regardless of where you work.
If you're a star analysts, then everyone wants to work with you. Whether this is Moelis LA or some other bank, you will be asked to be on every deal. Again, it just works that way. The ones at the bottom will not work as much. This is true at Moelis, and this is true at any bank. Be careful where you're getting your information from.
4) Other remarks:
No, VPs do not stay until 4AM. Only on very rare occasions. This is also true at other top banks.
The Moelis NY office can't be compared to the LA one. Very different space.
I think a popular misconception on this forum is that the analysts who work 120 weeks are somehow more qualified or better prepared for the buyside. Considering that 95%+ of the work that you do provides no educational value, I'd say that correlation is pretty overblown.
I wouldn't say people are scared to work hard so much as they don't see any incremental value in working Moelis LA hours.
Some of you are either manipulating facts or just plain silly. Look - instead of talking about hypothetical Linkedin searches, why dont we actually work with the real data and then attempt to understand what's really happening here. See this link: http://goo.gl/E7or4g
First, notice the filtering and play with it as much as you want -- you'll still see bunches of people from Moelis who work at Apollo, Oaktree, TPG, Silver Lake etc, contrary to some of the folks above who seem to be saying otherwise. Also, play with past firms - exchange Moelis for Evercore, Perella Weinberg etc and notice how the quality of buyside exits goes to complete shit, despite the old established Evercore and the small friendly legendary Perella Weinberg.
Secondly on the Apollo topic - Apollo has recently hired Moelis in the restructuring of the biggest LBO ever (TXU ~50bn) so don't say Moelis can't get placed into Apollo. One of the Moelis MDs' brother runs Healthcare at KKR and I can go on and on about Moelis' connections into PE and Distressed Debt.
Now understand another thing ... currently, Moelis is losing some representation on Linkedin in PE etc and there's a very specific reason for that - Moelis is only 7 years old so the analysts have really only been out for max 4-5 years. Of those, most have gone to the buyside but a lot of them are in grad school now simply due to this timing. Thats why Moelis' representation on Linkedin will definitely look a little thin now (yet so intimidating) only since a good proportion of its graduated analysts are in grad school. Give it another year or two when the firm graduates more analysts and some of the grad school folks get back to the buyside at more senior levels, only to hire more Moelis folk. This is a subtlety in the data and you've gotta read into it.
Understand one more thing - Moelis is known for great buyside placement - there's also a reason for that: great responsibility as an analyst, terrific deal flow, crazy MD to analyst ratio, extremely heavy sell-side PE representation and general aggressiveness of the firm. Not to mention, some unbelievable legacy connections from DLJ and UBS. So guys, please: keep this debate to whether you think working long hours here are worth it or not from a slightly more factual perspective. Insinuating that Moelis analysts dont get good buyside jobs because they aren't good enough or because the firm doesnt have ridiculous connections is just plain immature, not to mention so grossly inaccurate.
I actually don't like posting on WSO for sake of anonymity, but threads like these and the conviction of posters like you infuriate me.
I have worked in two of the firms being discussed here and I am currently at a MF PE. Moelis places well, but by no means has a monopoly on the "buyside" market among the boutiques. In fact it is very much on par with the others. All top kids from these boutique firms get almost the same looks from PEs and it very much boils down to how prepared/good the candidate is. As somebody else mentioned, having more time to prep aka. less time working on "live deals" can actually help - hence BX M&A's phenomenal placement into buyside (coupled with their brand). For example, at EVR the kids in the last two years placed at Apollo, KKR, H&F, Carlyle, WP, Silver Lake and there are multiple kids at those firms. Now there are a good 20 - 30 odd kids in their class I believe, so yes not everyone of them is at BX, but that is true of any firm, and I haven't even mentioned some of the top HFs kids have gone to.
I agree that Moelis has solid placement, but given their culture I would certainly not want to work there. I am pretty sure I would not have come out any smarter or placed any better if I had been there, but I would have been way more miserable. Also all boutiques poached partners from other top firms. Every top firm has someone that has a "solid" relationship with the PE shops. As I said, I work in a PE firm and part of my job is to maintain relationships with all the banks. Thats one of main ways we source deals, so not sure that's Moelis's competitive advantage over LZ/GHL/EVR/BX/MS/GS/JPM
Anyway, unlikely that I will want to contribute anymore to this thread, unless someone manages to annoy me this much, but thats my two cents.
Good luck to you.
The CEO and two Co-President's of Moelis (Ken, Jefferey, Navid) all work out of the LA office so believe me when I say it's not dying anytime soon. Seems like it's one guy commenting it on different threads, sounds like he got rejected from the LA office haha.
I have a friend in the office and can confirm their dealflow is still incredibly strong and analysts continue to place phenomenally well.