Nomura or Houlihan Lokey?
Hello!! Would you recommend to take an offer in Nomura M&A or Houlihan Lokey M&A?
For a London summer internship :)
Thanks a lot for your help!!
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Nomura
Houlihan Lokey for M&A advisory in the U.K.
Don't be fooled by Nomura being a very well known Japanese bank / a better known brand name to most people outside the industry. Nomura acquired Lehman Europe, whereas Barclays got the better Lehman North America, and most of those individuals have long since left anyway.
Look at the M&A league tables and specifically the advisors involved. Nomura is way down the list and is usually only involved for its debt financing capabilities, not M&A advisory.
Not sure why this is getting MS'd. It's not an insult to Nomura or shilling for HL, but they are two completely different banks operating in different areas of corp fin. For M&A exposure and sell-side experience, HL is one of if not the leader in deal volume. You'll get much more early deal reps, even if they are £50-£200m, and understand how to do a sponsor sell-side with your hands tied behind your back. Nomura will probably have larger corporate and transnational clients whom mainly want to use it's balance sheet for financing.
Agreed. I don’t work in either bank and have nothing against Nomura.
But for M&A in the U.K. specifically, Houlihan would give you much more relevant experience.
The answer is nuanced and depends on what exactly you offer is for and what you would like to focus on. For anything infrastructure and renewables related, Nomura will be miles ahead of HL. Consumer is another strong and successful team. So if your offer or interests are aligned with those strengths of the firm, you may be better off at Nomura.
HL leads on quantity of deals and you would be executing a ton of smallish sell sides, rather than doing large and complex deals.
Nomura has better exits in PE if that’s what you seek. For pure Advisory, HL hands down though
Sorry to hijack thread but was curious how Mizuho stacks up with these two?
For advisory it doesn’t even compare. It’s a financing and trading house.
Don’t forget Mizuho acquired Greenhill, which is known for its M&A advisory.
What are HL exits like in London? What do people on the buyside think about the firm and their analysts?
For a London M&A summer internship: choose Houlihan Lokey for hands-on advisory experience and deal volume, or Nomura if you’re focused on infrastructure, renewables, or PE exits. HL gives more execution exposure; Nomura offers sector-specific strengths and better PE exit opportunities.
I think you will get 50 times the experience and reps at Houlihan from having friends at both.
Houlihan in my view. Nomura isn’t that good.
You’ll get more deal exp and have better opportunities to lateral in my view. Unless you want to do infra in which case greentech is great. But I don’t recommend anybody to do anything infra related unless you want to spend your life working more than your average peer and doing 270 tornado charts and sensitivities
Houlihan if you want to do pure sell-side advisory. Better deal experience especially as a junior. Nomura in my view benefits most from being an established Japanese name, and having a huge balance sheet to take on financing & securitization
They don’t really even have a balance sheet
Hi, was wondering what your profile and exp's like?
I don’t rlly get why ppl are saying Nomura for PE. Unless I’m missing something wouldn’t you get like at least double the M&A reps at Houlihan?
Nomura has better reps for PE from its London office
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