Private Capital Advisory Vs Investment Banking (Coverage)
Recently saw someone mentioned that PCA's pay and WLB was better than IB at Evercore. Although I don't have any offer for PCA, I was just curious to understand whether IB (Prestige and exit opps) is still worth the effort if PCA potentially can also lead to good exits and some might argue that it is one of the teams to look out for in the future?Would appreciate all the thoughts!
If you are looking at the roles in the UK, then disregard this, but for the US:
If you are planning on exiting banking after two years, traditional IB is better (depends on the place, but EVR M&A >>> EVR PCA when it comes to PE placements). That being said, if you are planning on being a career banker PCA (and especially EVR PCA since they dominate the market) is the way to go. Better hours, higher aso+ comp, wider array of deal types (closer to a BB coverage IB in the large variance of deal types).
EVR PCA did 60 billion in deal flow last year with ~80 bankers across both NYC/LON (from PEI), which means an near 2-4x fee generation compared to M&A. EVR M&A is way more prestige though.
Can people go from evr pca to secondaries investing?
May I ask why it doesn't make too much difference for UK roles?
Would be interested on hearing more about this topic? PCA is growing so fast and could be massive (it already is tbh). Also, does anyone have total comp numbers for PCA analysts 1/2/3?
PCA is a fantastic career option vs coverage ib which is also a good career option but obviously opens you up to more roles down the road. Cracking it in PCA really means you're extremely relationship-oriented and you are comfortable speaking with key capital holding relationships from the get-go. As a PCA banker, you are effectively helping steward your firm's most important PE / other alt fund relationships and providing them with the inroads to raise more capital. So expect it to be more salesy and a job that you grow into as you create your own rolodex and work your MD's existing book which you can one day hope to inherit. Can't say the exit ops are great in the sense that you'll likely only have secondaries funds (which really depends on the work you've done given some PCA groups may do more modeling than others) or IR roles. At least from what I've seen. Not sure about prestige but making it up the ranks in PCA can certainly crown you as one of the most connected people on the street given how many providers of capital / GPs you'll get on first name basis with.
Would also add that advising on GP-led transactions can be fairly technical. You’re still serving as an advisor to the clients on how to run a process, structure a transaction, negotiate terms with investors, etc… so would say the skillset goes beyond just relationship management.
100% correct. Didn't intend to overlook that and it shouldn't appear that way. I've just seen often times that those continuation transactions, while often being managed by the PCA group will many times be executed by M&A or someone not the PCA group.
Our m&a team only feeds us industry slides we do most of the asset and transaction due diligence (we meaning our pca team)
What’s the comparison of hours in PCA vs M&A at an EB?
Fairly similar. Secondaries (not primaries) are M&A-lite processes and given the briefer nature of the process, hours tend to be slightly better across most top shops (including top MMs). EVR is a different story they’re a different breed and that’s why their paid that way.
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For MBA folks, how does someone get into PCA as opposed to M&A or Coverage IBD, post-mba?
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Is moving from PCA to a FSG desk a possibility?
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