Placement advice for foreigner with weak English writing skills

I'm writing this post on behalf of my friend, please bear with me. A bit of background, his family immigrated from Asia about a year ago, and while his English speaking skills improved quite a bit, come next summer, he'll still be lacking the ability to properly express himself through writing.

To summarize his question: Which MM IBD groups are considered to be the least writing intensive? Preferably, I'd like to join a group that does the bare minimum, specifically, in terms of pitchbook creation, memorandum drafts, report writing, etc. I'm great with Excel, but when it comes to anything writing, I'm at a severe disadvantage. Placement is coming up soon, and optimally, I'd like to join a group where I'll have the best chance at securing a FT return offer. I'm fully aware just how lucky I am to have received this SA role (especially given my current predicament), so I really need to cover my bases before even considering a potential group switch, let alone entertaining additional FT recruitment next year.

Options: M&A, Coverage Groups, FSG, Leveraged Finance, RX, M&A, ECM, DCM, Structured Finance, Public Finance, Corporate Finance Advisory, Loan Syndications.

Can Institutional Sales work?

Thank you in advance for your contributions.

8 Comments
 

I'd tell your friend to place themselves in as many writing classes as possible. 

Grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc. are considered table stakes and anyone senior to them will lose it after re-writing shitful slides all day. 

Secondly, this is a client facing business, so they'll get crushed if they send poorly written stuff externally.

There is no group where bad writing will be tolerated.

 

Yes! He works hard at it and receives half-day tutoring in addition to college classes. Smart kid, very charismatic, you should see how great he was with alumni networking. At this point, the goal is a return offer, and it likely comes down to which group provides the best mix of most leeway for errors and least amount of intern competition. He's come this far, hoping one of y'all can advise him on a group to get there all the way.

 
Most Helpful

I say a coverage infrastructure, O&G and/or industrials group. In general, these project finance esque jobs are more old school, and focus primarily on quantitative analysis and much less on pitching new business.

This additional comment may only be a stigma, but teams for these groups are generally located down south, in states who's ordinary form of communication will often be considered 'less cordial' when compared to their NYC counterparts. Perhaps that can work...

Wishing the best of luck to your friend! Tell him to work hard, show he wants to be there, and I have full confidence that he'll make it. Fyi, with good networking, there's potential exit-ops to infra PE as well. Improve those English skills!

 

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