Post IBD: Energy Project Financing

In energy, a lot of the activity is based on project financing. Obviously there are the usual PE/HF type exits, but does anybody have knowledge about this field? I believe JP and Barclays are the two huge players in N.A. project financing for energy, but could be wrong and wanted to get other folks' thoughts. Is it a viable exit opp from Energy IBD? Is the work model intensive or just paper pushing?

29 Comments
 

PF is a lot of (hard core) modelling at junior level, but at VP and above it is much more about winning mandates, defending transactions in front of credit committees and supervising legal documentation negotiations.

It's a very interesting and broad area of banking. You obviously gotta have very good finance background, but you also need to have significant legal (often gained on the field) and technical (many PF people are engineer + MBA) competencies.

Biggest players in that field are european and japanese banks.

 

Coming in as an analyst, are the PE/HF exit oops significant? Obviously not as much as M&A but how about compared to Levfin/DCM/ECM. Is the pay also similar?

I have the opportunity to join within a European bank and am wondering if this is a worthwhile opportunity and if it is on par with M&A/ levfin/ ecm

 
Best Response

Don't know if this is "on par" with M&A from a bonus perspective.

However work/life balance in PF is way better than in M&A, and I believe the job is more interesting there for a junior. As a junior in PF you will be involved in all steps of the transactions and will quickly build a nice portfolio of competencies, wheras in M&A your scope will be much more limited. This is not unrelated to the fact that PF teams are usually quite small with very few juniors (on the contrary of M&A where you have armies of Analysts).

 

There's a lot of info about this if you use the search function. But, I'll give you a quick rundown assuming you mean banking and not trading (your use of the term "desk" makes me unsure which you are referring to)

1) Yes - modeling midtream MLPs and E&P is much different than modeling a generic EBITDA company. With MLPs you model the distribution to shareholder through a waterfall and in E&P you model out the use of reserves. Additionally, different multiples are used. Midstream you look at multiples involving distributions and in E&P you look at multiples pertaining to reserves. While Midstream may seem similar to other industries because it is just measuring distributions (much like cash flow), it is different because the nature of the MLP structure means that there are set tiers, etc that the capital flows through and so you have to build this in. 2) You should have an understanding of the the oil and gas commodity market. This will be important in building models and in the pitch. 3) shoot me a PM

 

^ in Calgary.

There will always be O&G deals in Calgary but not that many for BB given that they really only work on the bigger cross boarder deals (CNOOC/Nexen, Sinopec/Daylight, PETRONAS/Progress) or debt. Even then they are typically buyside so theres quite a bit of intervention from other groups (lately its been asian buyers).

Also unlikely to get a slice of asset deals since BBs don't have A&D teams filled with geologists and engineers.

Basically there will be a lot of elephant hunting. Upside is that as an analyst, you'll be paid more than your peers in NYC/London and have more stability (the office will be run fairly lean).

 
kalgaIn the past most BBs adjusted the pay for Canadians based on the exchange rate (when it was ~$0.6USD = 1 $1 CAD). The exchange rate is on par now but they haven't moved the conversion yet so there are a few shops out there paying 92K base salary. Total comp is pretty much the same though across the good shops in town.

Wow. That's awesome. Man, I hope I get the interview :)

 

I may have confused y'all with the topic title. I should have put Energy IBD to Corporate PE ie: KKR, Blackstone.

Edit: @Jeff - i'm just curious...

 

I didn't even know what IBD was when I was starting college. I thought "investment banking" was something that went on at every local bank branch. Also "investment bankers", to me, were people who sat around buying stocks all day.

Wall Street leaders now understand that they made a mistake, one born of their innocent and trusting nature. They trusted ordinary Americans to behave more responsibly than they themselves ever would, and these ordinary Americans betrayed their trust.
 

I didn't even know what IBD was when I was starting college. I thought "investment banking" was something that went on at every local bank branch. Also "investment bankers", to me, were people who sat around buying stocks all day.

Wall Street leaders now understand that they made a mistake, one born of their innocent and trusting nature. They trusted ordinary Americans to behave more responsibly than they themselves ever would, and these ordinary Americans betrayed their trust.
 

First off, chill out have a beer and make some friends at college.

Second, there are energy-focused PE firms (First Reserve is a good example) but regular corporate PE firms regularly bid on energy-related assets. KKR and TPG bought TXU (not that it's going great) and BX recently bid on Dynegy.

There have been many great comebacks throughout history. Jesus was dead but then came back as an all-powerful God-Zombie.
 

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