Moelis London?
Have seen a lot of comments about EBs recently and think that PJT and PWP are well covered but I would love to get more detailed/updated information about Moelis' London office.
Any verified information about Moelis London's office, culture, average hours, analyst pay/bonus, class size, dealflow, and exit opps to vanilla PE/VC ?
Thanks !
Decent in Rx, bad in M&A. 10~ish analysts, pretty friendly. Exits mostly to debt stuff due to its RX focus
What's "bad" ? How would you say their RX/M&A practices compare to other groups? Exits mostly debt-related due to employee preference or due to headhunters only reaching out with distressed opps ?
Look on MM, or even their website, they really don’t seem to come up much in EU M&A. Ive only once seen them on a deal.
In general, EB in London is quite different. Most of the US names don’t have a big presence (whether that is Moelis, PWP, Greenhill etc.), tbh would be interested to see a ranking somewhere.
The close few MM M&A deals per year - 4 UK M&A and 1 UK CapMarket deal, 1 EUR M&A deal since Jan-19 for those that have announced dealsizes. That's 6 deals, for a class of analysts of ~10-12 people. Not every of analyst will have closed an M&A deal in the last year an a half. Other than the sale of a portfolio of mortages, all deals are in the 100m-250m range.
HHs know that therefore reach out mostly for debt opportunities from distressed all the way to CLOs investing. So effectively if you wanted to close deals in M&A you're better off a some places like Baird/William Blair.
In Rx they are decent but not on HL/PJT/Laz level's - not in Rx myself but this is what I hear from freinds. I think that most people that choose them are keen on Rx.
A slight update on this. They hired c.15 first year analysts alone this year in London and are trying to grow the team more and more.
Not sure about the deal flow.
Source: I work at Moelis in another office
~15 first years and ~20 interns. Deal flow wise it’s a bit of a transition now where all the deals from last year are closing and a marketing phase is starting a bit. Last 2 years were very execution intensive though. Mostly active in TMT, healthcare and industrials. Btw people say Moelis is better in RX but the large majority of people actually do M&A
had a friend who was at moelis - they said it wasn't great. but have friend who is there now - he said its good only for brand name otherwise its a real grind.
I have 2 friends in the London team and know 1 other guy who quit, this is what they’ve all said:
On the M&A side it’s terrible, bad deal flow and deal sizes are small (if any). The London office pretty much piggybacks of the US and basically supports the US when needed. If you want m&a pretty much any other place would be better.
Really bad culture as well, both my friends there work very long hours and work most weekends, they do a lot of pitches for deals they don’t win. They also said most the people there are very arrogant Europeans who think they’re Patrick Bateman.
Exit ops are good only because of the US prestige that comes with it, with most recruiters not really understanding anything more than brand name, and also good for buyside roles which require RX experience - the guy I know that left joined blackstone focusing on distressed investments/special sits, he got this due to the restructuring experience he got at moelis.
So overall it’s a dead for m&a, but fairly ok for restructuring although still miles behind compared to Lazard / other EBs for RX
Pay is also very good all my friends got really good bonuses
How’s pay good if deal flow’s bad? Just curious, not sure about how the comp is pooled…
US offices bring in good revenue and it gets shared with Europe bonuses as they help support the US, also their quite small in London so not that many mouths to feed
Very decent Rx team, not great in M&A. Doesn't help that almost the entire office spent years on Aramco which let's be honest resulted in a massive disappointment for everyone involved.
Generally, the whole EB scene in Europe is not the same as in the US where firms like EVR or PJT get hyped massively (probably rightly so). However, most of those firms over here still get looks from the good funds (both PE and HF) and that's what counts, at least if you are not planning on being a career banker.
Pay is good at those shops, incl Moelis, and the guys I know / knew at MoCo were generally quite happy with hours and exposure. Got decent interviews, good bonuses and solid culture, not too bad overall if you work with the right ppl.
I also went down the EB route and ultimately had a similar experience with somewhat more dealflow but in the end want to caution you (both from personal experience and now from large cap PE perspective) that the Top BB route (GS, MS, JPM) is still the easier path to PE, at least in Europe/London.
Is there any publicly available info on EB comp? For BB there are the annual surveys which are great, but I’m yet to see something similar for EBs
Look up the Arkesden compensation report
all I know is that Evercore should be 55k instead of 50k for A1 base. Bonuses at EBs should tend to be at least or higher than American BBs
All anecdotal and just regurgitating what I heard on WSO btw
Good post!
What kind of hours and pay are we talking about here?
Also, why is there such diverging opinions on the hours/culture at these firms?
could you elaborate on "very decent" RX team? how would you compare it to HL/Roths/Lazard/PJT?
Better than Roth/EVR, same level or slightly below Laz... working on very good deals
bump - would be great to hear more data points for EB bonuses, seem to be significantly higher than BB’s (120k as an A1?)
when do they recruit?
They are mostly done for LDN for this year, so usually Aug-November/December let's say (for regular recruiting cycle roles)
Mostly done means? Done for targets still looking for non-targ?
In London EB space, Rothschild is the king followed by Lazard, then a big gap and very very few M&A done by other boutiques (easily checked by looking into league tables or speaking with actual bankers and not interns)
Btw Rothschilds working on mainly mid-market deals is something everyone repeats but is like 5 years old; if you compare deal breakdown by the size you will see that Rothschilds worked on more £1bn+ deals than Lazard (in both 2019 and 2018)
FYI the only boutiques we really hire from are Rothschild and Lazard
Never met anyone from Moelis in HF space
The thing with Moelis is that London analysts also work on German / Netherlands / Middle East / sometimes US deals, and there is some deal flow there. You just can’t compare to Roth given size.
Also wouldn’t say Roth is above Lazard. They do more deals but not bigger.
NY-based Moelis analyst here. Do not join Moelis. There's a reason there's been no Moelis analyst posting on here.
Moonshot pitches and tiny engagements lead to an insane amount of work - not worth it.
London-based Moelis analyst - would second this. Complete sweatshop, awful culture.
The culture really is a major issue - senior bankers are incredibly toxic and the firm continually takes engagements with tiny companies/fees making the workload even more unbearable.
People have left across the board in NY/SF and the firm is thinly staffed. Do not join.
Culture is actually quite good (but agree hours are quite bad)
care to flag my OC app to HR :) ?
Pay at moelis was like GS this year .
HC team is good but still in build mode
What would you say the kind of hours / pay is for Analysts at Moelis?
Hours - depends. Probably 9am - 12am baseline / 75h week baseline with up and down variations. Summer and Christmas obviously have lower intensity. Right now it seems first years have it easier than in previous years though.
Pay - base a bit below market (I think £65k A1) but higher bonus (although 1st yrs bonus last years was disappointing - 2nd yrs bonus was ok though)
Does anyone have any insight about their recent performance in healthcare sector? just knew they hired an ex-MS banker and seems to have a stronger deal flow last year.
Do they actually work a lot on those deals or just work as fairness opinion provider?
They’ve been hiring in healthcare, this is a growing team. The MS bankers have been there for 1-2 years and basically built the practice, there are 3 healthcare MDs now in London.
I guess it depends on the deals but they seem to do pretty technical stuff if that’s your concern, you would have your fair share of modelling
Thanks a lot! It sounds like they seldom take the leading/exclusive advisor role. Please correct me if it is wrong.
Solid team, great creds in 2 years
Question is whether they are milking the relationships from prior banks (MS) and will run out after 2 years, or if MD wants another 5-10 years of this.
I think the analysts are not sector focused though - it’s a pool
It depends on what you want, if you’re interested in specialising as an analyst people can do that, eg this has been done in RX, healtchcare, tech, etc over the past few years
moelis has the most suicides out of any investment bank in london - source: a VP who used to work there
What kinda stat is that and who tf is keeping track of it ffs
i guess it shows u how shit of a place it is to work
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