Piper Sandler Interview Advice
Got a first round with Piper Sandler in their healthcare group. Any advice from those who have interviewed there or thoughts on the firm/group in general?
Is this FT or SA. Do u mind sharing location?
Piper in general really care about culture and fit. Be very prepared for behavioral questions
Piper Healthcare is highly regarded, especially in med tech, but it depends. Also depends on office. If you're in MN, med tech or HCIT are great groups, but I'd probably stay away from biotech. If you're in SF, biotech would be a good group, but may limit your exit opps only if you'd like to move into PE/LBOs because biotech is inherently less M&A-based. If you're in NYC, good luck, because culture there is brutal and your only choices are services (low deal flow/low M&A deal flow), tools and diagnostics (boring/low M&A deal flow), and biotech (all equity raises - mostly follow-ons).
Thanks, this is very helpful.
Within biotech, how much of the projects are m&a vs equity? What are some potential exits from this group?
Being conservative on equity portion, at least 90%+ are equity deals. To my knowledge, that group worked on one M&A transaction in the last two years, MAYBE two, but I believe only one closed (if it even closed, can't remember for sure). It's just the nature of the industry. There is comparatively lower M&A activity in biotech/biopharma. It's just a fact.. Potential exits from biotech might include equity research, venture capital funds that invest in life sciences, and other public equity funds, hedge funds, private LPs or institutional principal investors. I'm not super familiar with the exit opps for biotech because I didn't have much interaction and haven't seen where people have gone. Your best bet is probably to lateral to another group or firm that actually does M&A if your goal is PE/LBOs. I would caveat the above by saying that just within sell-side banking and equity research, biotech can still present a compelling career-track position, but I would qualify that statement by adding that most who make it big in sell-side banking/ER for biotech have some background, training, or advanced degree in biological sciences, especially in research.
Any idea what a technical interview would look like from this group? Any areas I should spend more time on?
Obviously know the statements and their linkage inside and out, know valuation etc. Know the core financial concepts and be able to recite the formulas if asked. Some questions are bizarre and hard to predict, like “what’s the definition of a moral hazard?”
Because they are less M&A focused, most questions are there to figure out if you’re someone that’ll still have a positive attitude at 3am while updating the same slide for the 17th time that will be looked at for 2 seconds at tomorrow’s pitch.
Could be good to know common adjustments to income that happen in the biotech space.
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