Most Overhyped Investment Banks on WSO 2021

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Ignorance isn't something to be proud of...

Holy hell is this wrong. You are out of your mind if you think BB’s, EB’s, MM’s or basically any bank under the sun, isn’t exclusive advisor on a shitload of deals. Sure, your LinkedIn (or other wsj headlining name) IPO’s might have Morgan Stanley as lead left on the IPO, but there are numerous smaller IPO’s managed by other banks. Also, M&A is really what most people think of when they think of investment banking and there are business deals of all difference sizes and sub-verticals that are carved out as specialties by various banks. Having worked across the gamut of deals as well through IB and PE, I can say first hand, your experience on a $200m sell side isn’t going to be that different from a multi billion dollar sell-side.  The biggest difference I honestly would say is a BB experience is going to have more red-tape and pitching than an EB or MM. But honestly, the analyst role is pretty identical across most banks due to the first 9 months every analyst just learning how ppt, business, and excel work, and the next year being learning the basics of what goes in a dataroom, how to model, what a cip/cim is etc. It’s such a large complex industry with so many players the hair splitting is lost on college kids or new analysts who just aren’t aware of how complex the world is.

Why

Not OP. Have had experience with the group. PJT name is based on RSSG, and M&A seems to do mostly MM with the few big-name deals within the years (T-Mobile Sprint, Abbvie Alllergan). Lacking in some industry coverage areas -- have never seen them win anything significant in Consumers recently, for example. 

atleast barc is still being mentioned. UBS/DB are hardly worth comparison.

I’ll raise that too and say tech and group verticals broadly are overrated. As an analyst, a majority of what you learn isn’t industry specific it’s why the job/ skill set is so in-demand. A great industrial analyst and a great tech analyst have a 98% overlap. I honestly think I could write 4 pages and summarize the industry specific info of having been in a tech group compared to someone that was at the same bank and operated in a different group.

Since you edited, replying to the median exit thing—6 years down the line people will have families, people will have taken a variety of career risk etc. I think people on this thread under-estimate how many people do banking and/or PE and leave the industry completely or that the best banking exit is undeniably starting your own enterprise (whether a fund or other business). Also the economics are unique and different farther down your career—how do you compare a person who has bigger carry % in Denver, but ultimately making 500k, to someone in NY making 600k and is less instrumental to the fund they work for? 
 

500k goes farther in Denver, but 600k in NY is more and they work for a brand name. Point I’m trying to make is that there is a great deal of hair splitting, which clearly isn’t what undergrads who worked their ass off for an internship somewhere want to hear. They want to hear that their firm has undeniably set themselves up, but sadly the working world is just a continuous amount of effort from now till you die.

I came from one of these tech groups being mentioned (GS/MS/Q). Honestly, the candid reality is that our candidates are more likely to get good buy side jobs, period. Every year the majority of our analyst classes would go to MF/UMM PE, growth, top hedge funds and VCs (that literally only recruit from a small handful of top groups across the street), etc.. of course others don't fare as well or self-select out, but most polished analysts end up placing near the top.

By no means is everyone guaranteed offers during on-cycle, but you can get any interview you want, you always get the benefit of the doubt in interviews given the quality of your group, and as I mentioned there quite literally are exits exclusively available to your group and a few others. Of course there's a bit of correlation =/= causation going on because most people in these groups come from targets with solid GPAs, test scores, etc. so it's not just the group name driving these exits.

Obviously other banks exit to MF/UMM and HF/VC but per capita placement to top tier buy side gigs is just much lower the further you go down the league tables.

I would argue to gap is less meaningful for GS/MS/JP vs a top group at BofA/Citi/Barcap/CS, but it's a very meaningful gap relative to UBS and Jeff that were mentioned here. The reality is more kids in these groups are getting MF offers than Jeff/UBS people are getting MF interviews. 

If you're not shooting for top exits it doesn't really matter A vs B vs C, sure, but I wouldn't misinform people that the "expected value" of an exit is the same at GS/MS vs Jeff/UBS because that's just fiction.

Also you "have a friend who I know for certain did more and larger transactions at a middle market than a friend at Qatalyst"

No shot. Spend a few minutes on Qatalyst's web page. The place churns out $1bn+ deals weekly with like 15 analysts; you can shit on Qatalyst for a lot of things but deal flow is not one of them

Have you ever even worked in banking? I have friends that completed like 2 deals during their stint since their transactions seemed to sadly always go sideways or they needed to remarket numerous times due to a stubborn ownership who wouldn't sell unless a bogey was hit. I genuinely think this fact could only surprise someone who hasn’t done the role or who just started one.

I come on here to help prospects and new analysts demystify atrocious dogma on this website and you get arrogant kids like you acting like they somehow understand an incredibly complex field with various degrees of competitive differentiation and business models because they did a summer internship. Do you even know how long a sell-side M&A process typically takes? That might help explain why this statement is true.

Pisses me off when I get comments like this and monkey shit for being maybe the only person on this thread that has done 2 years of banking experience. I’m out, happy holidays.

You were asking for hireview questions a year ago. Pretty confident you have no idea what an investment banker even does. It’s not that the groups aren’t great—they are. It’s that it’s totally lost on you guys how much of a hair splitting distinction it will be in the long run. You guys have no idea how similar the analyst role is across these shops. As the poster said, you won’t be able to tell the difference between the deal you’d do at GS and the deal you’d do at Barclays or even a middle market likely. They might be larger at gs, but hell that’s not even true because they do a ton of mm deals. The point is larger deals might matter for the MD’s, but for the analysts it’s not that different. 

You also commented following on a 2022 full-time investment banking thread. You haven’t worked a day in this industry. Can confidently say you don’t have a clue what makes a good investment bank and you aren’t even aware of what the job entails. 

This is like watching a dad scold his children 

OP is saying it should be shit on more

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Thanks for clarifying. That's what I originally meant in my comment. Most don't want to go to MF anyways because they see it as banking 2.0 with the same hours. Similar to what I said, corp dev is not as competitive and you would probably land a corp dev role from any bank. That's why ranking doesn't matter for most analysts. 

'Focus on yourself', says the guy who has been following me around WSO and commenting on all my posts/threads. GTFO.

I'm good thx. 

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