Most Overhyped Investment Banks On WSO 2022
Following the tradition lmao. Figured that we should probably have a thread on which are the most overhyped firms on Wall Street Oasis
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Literally Jefferies lmao.
Rationale:
Culture: self explanatory
Deal-Size: with rising interest rate, TTV will most likely be cut in half, so no more Bn dollars deals every month
Exit: Pretty good. Nothing to shit on
Comp: refer to the various other threads on WSO
Ah yes, rising interest rates and falling TTV or EV are hitting JEF the hardest. No one else in the market will be impacted. Thanks for the insight, intern.
Deal Size is not Jefferies specific. Pretty implicit that it affects EVERY GROUP IN THE WORLD DOING DEALS. Bringing it up for jefferies is just so intern of you.
I swear WSO is 99% useless and filled with analysts and undergrads with little to no work experience. You all do everyone a disservice and shouldn’t even be allowed to comment. None of these banks are overhyped and if you don’t work at the specific bank you name, then you definitely shouldn’t be commenting.
Guggenheim too
what's up with gugg, what's the rationale there
Solid firm don’t get me wrong but dealflow has been down since 2021 considerably (even more so than average). They lost major healthcare rainmaker to CVP as well.
I work at Guggenheim and I honestly don't know how the large cap justifies its existence. The middle market group basically floating the entire bank for the last two years.
edit: love the MS being thrown here by large cap. Happy to keep subsidizing your bonuses this year after another record year for the large cap teams
IDK if Guggenheim can be considered overhyped though. There's been a fairly balanced commentary on them on most wso posts and I don't really think sentiment is overhyped. Solid firm with a good HC and TMT group, simple as.
I don’t feel like it’s that overhyped. Seems to me that WSO is pretty balanced/realistic with where Gugg is at atm.
Can confirm Gugg is massively overhyped on WSO - “just trust me”, it’s basically CapitalOne IB at this point. Please stop applying (so there’s less competition for my seat 😊)
Jefferies, I heard the M&A team been getting ton of hype!!!
No one is overrated anymore lol. Everyone has been shit on.I would say the most underrated bank has to be FT Partners. They have great exit opps and are also now paying analysts bonuses of $2-3M. Definitely a great place to start your career, some may even describe it as paradise.
2-3 Million for analysts? no way hahahah.
How do ppl like you even find jobs smh
Yeah but you've got to remember that they tip their MDs something insane like ~20% of TC, so they don't actually pocket all of that.
Greenhill 100%
Nah bro GHL > JPM lolll
FTP is slept on per usual.
($140k base as an1 btw)
Lol, AKA, the firm that fired first year analysts who were 6 months into the job
Context?
Raymond James
the RJ stans that act like they all work for the Boston tech team where reality is a majority of the groups have minimal dealflow or compete LMM for mandates
Uhh…I don’t think rj has any “stans” who aren’t employees there
Agree - they all post on here and hype themselves up & rally around the Boston tech team like it’s their identity
RJ employee here and you’re half right about deal flow everywhere other than tech. There’s a couple competitive FIG groups as well as industrials at RJ that have very consistent deal flow and keeps people from sweating about their job security. Other than that, Consumer, healthcare, energy, and real estate kind of struggle. Culture is pretty good though and they increased PTO to 15 days for analysts, which is probably on par with Street cause it definitely sucked to only be given 10
You have no idea how good you have it. Most people (all?) do not use their 10-15 days as analysts
There was a 3 month period where every PWP employee was on this forum “yeah CVP/PWP/PJT all great options, pick any…”
FT. That is all.
100% agree
Greenhill: a walking relic low key high key in deep trouble
Jefferies: some pretend like its a shadow BB but in reality its a glorified MM. Super weird culture too, like a 1960s bank trying to blend in at Coachella
PWP: too good to be compared to the smaller shops, but just not quite as good as the top EBs. It feels like its in no mans land, in a bad way
JPM aid the greatest bank of all time p
Might be a hot take but I’ve seen way too many on this forum circle jerk William Blair for whatever reason
RBC also virtually never gets shit on and is usually included whenever a prospect makes a new weekly ranking
I think people just like the bank--a banker in Chicago lives like a Queen/King.
Evercore.
The one you got a job at
Control-F for my bank
So is Gugg or Jef more overhyped?
Anybody hyping Jefferies at all is mentally subnormal.
Place is terrible, honestly would recommend nobody ever goes there.
why? (besides the incident)
also curious
ex JEF, 100% agree.
People there really do act they're Lehman pre-GFC, when they're too stupid to even wipe Lehman pre-GFC's asses.
There are nice people there, but that's not the norm. Anyone who stays longer than 4 years is sus - they basically can't find a job somewhere else, since the comp isn't even great and there are clawbacks even on ASO bonuses.
Centerview
Tell me you’ve never worked a day in IB without telling you haven’t worked a day in IB.
Care to elaborate?
Unless you’re doing biotech sellsides with Alan Hartman - cvp is overrated
Moelis L.A. office
William Blair
Baird
Rationale: West Coast is gay, Blair is a girl's name & Baird is similar to bird but their banking team has nothing to do with birds and it makes me sick. People like them are the reason Bald Eagles are going to be extinct soon and the ice caps are melting.
Bro what did I just read??
"west coast is gay" have fun shivering down the bleak, gray streets you walk everyday. I'll be smoking some of the best weed in the world on a world-class beach in the middle of December.
Bleak and grey > Meek and gay
I didn't MS you btw
Yo do you want your rent to keep rising? Let the East Coasters believe.
California sucks, everyone, don't come here, oh no, so many liberals, much traffic, wow.
RBC
is PJT really as good as it seems on WSO?
One of the guys from my SA program went to PJT for FT. I thought to myself, if everyone at PJT is like him, we don't stand a chance pitching against them lol.
what was he like
Yes
as a lateral at PJT, 100%
How bad are the hours at PJT vs your old bank
What is it like in your group?
Wells Fargo
investment banking
At a regional MM, everyone in my group (even the MDs) think Harris Williams is the greatest investment bank ever
Most senior people tend to care about comp more than title and prestige (they’ve got the Rolodex and whatever at that level)
HW apparently pays really well for MM and if you’re from Virginia (or into it) that’s unique value add
Obviously (in no order) GS, MS, JPM, EVR, MOE, PJT, LAZ, PWP, JEFF, DB, HS, CS, UBS, Ducera, ROTH, BARCAP, CITI, Macquarie, QATALYST, Allen, LionTree, MUFG, MIZUHO, Nomura, SMBC, JMP, RJ, RBC, Blair, Stifel, Truist, BGL, Santander, and Scotia are all overhyped, and you totally shouldn’t work at any of these firms. If you do you’ll only make a few hundred thousand per year in your early twenties.
I don't think any banks gets dumped on here more than Jefferies and Greenhill lol. I don't think either of them can be considered overhyped if 95% of the time they are mentioned it's someone trashing them
EBs are probably overhyped (categorically) vs. GS/MS and maybe JPM. It's died down but last year PWP specifically was pretty overhyped.
Generally anything that gets moderately overhyped here gets hit with a massive backlash that is more exaggerated than any overhyping ever was.
What happened with Greenhill? Just slower deaflow compared to peak times?
They have been in secular decline for a long time. Back in the late 90s through the late 2000s they were a bit like Evercore in reputation. The founder retired from the CEO position in 2007 and they started to fall off. You also had other independent advisory firms rise up in the period just before the financial crisis (Centerview, PWP, Moelis) so they had new challengers in their segment of the market. They lost good MDs to the upcoming EBs and had to compete against them for replacements.
EBs are massively overhyped relative to BBs
Mid-tier and below BBs are massively underrated (UBS/DB/CS)
All MMs outside of a few obvious outliers are largely the same. I’ve seen MM rankings but there’s minimal material difference between them
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