I recently looked into a bank where during my interview, I was told that there were about 10-15 members of the group that were directors/MDs and they only had about 4-5 associates. This is at a boutique M&A bank.
Is this type of personnel usual at a boutique or is it a sign of alot of the associates being let go?
Thanks
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It's a sign of 100 hour work weeks. Moelis has like what, 230 bankers or so? 40 of them are MDs.
Unless they're MD's are terrible, they have inverted structure with more senior-personnel and less junior associates/analysts, so it usually correlates with higher deal volume per analyst and hence terrible hours.
Moelis still has one, but it's not as absolutely terrible as it was when it was for the first few months because of the addition of laterals and FT analyst classes.
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Most of the boutiques will have more seniors because for relationship reasons ... I mean a place like evercore has more vicechairman than a BB bank. But those senior guys all came from BB's with a rolodex thicker than my mattress. It will just give you great exposure
It is structured this way for deal flow. The MDs have the relationships and bring clients through the doors.
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How many analysts are there? This is importnat, because a lot of firms will have more MDs than associates, but about 1 to 1 on the analyst level.
It's actually good news for you. You don't want a lot of mid-level bankers clogging up the process, giving you lots of comments and generally taking up more of your time per book.
The ideal structure of an investment bank in my view is an hourglass shape, with a lot of MDs generating deal flow, plenty of analysts working on them and minimal mid-level "managers". The analysts get great exposure to senior-level bankers and clients, and less time is lost dealing with mid-level people that usually barely add any value if they cannot help you do the work. Of course, this requires analysts that can really step into high-level roles and do the work correctly without supervision.
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