PWP Restructuring?

Quick look on reorg and they are on some notable debtor side transactions right now as we speak. But you’re right. If there’s any major restructuring for sponsors or strategics 9/10 it’s pjt or evr. These groups just have the sheer size and strength to do anything. Most times these two are the debtors/key creditorngroup and whatever is left it up to us (HL/LAZ/MOE/PWP/CVP/Gugg now too) to fight for.

I actually disagree with you, I think their shop is underrated and shit on for no reason on this website. Considering there are ~4 active partners  they have very strong deal flow and are on a lot of quality mandates.

in terms of analyst experience I hear it’s relatively sweaty. But my friends in the group  did end up at a MFs/UMM. Despite saying how sweaty it was they had good things to say about their experiences.

Also, I read a comment above about Ducera not doing well, and I can assure you that they are still strong players in the rx space. They’re very aggressive and surprisingly land win really impressive advisory roles. Just look at conmscope as an example there were literally 3 other “T1” shops touted on wso that pitched and lost to them. Their senior bench is extremely impressive. However as everyone knows they’re relatively top heavy and their mid level employees aren’t the strongest which leads to the analyst level being extremely sweaty.

hope my insight helps.

Moelis, Guggenheim, and Centerview all do plenty of debtor sides. Jefferies does as well, just usually for smaller deals. Wouldn't say the market share is anywhere close to 90/10 split.

Restructuring is generally sweaty everywhere other than HL, so your friend's experience isn't really out of norm.

Ducera has a ton of mid level people.

Honestly IMO PWP RX is both stronger than HL RX from a high-level and in terms of the junior experience within the group. HL RX is huge, and I don't think that people realize how much the 80/20 rule applies at the senior level here. While HL RX is a volume shop and gets mandates, there's a lot of seniors who just aren't that strong and the majority of mandates are really secured by a handful of top seniors. As a result, you'll be doing a lot more BD/pitch work for some seniors who (1) aren't that strong and (2) aren't the most pleasant people to work with. Due to the size of HL RX, the seniors across offices are a lot less collaborative as well and can be pretty cutthroat with each other. A big drawback of HL RX is that HL RX rarely works with the CorpFin teams. Granted, HL CorpFin is very MM-oriented, but at places like PWP the RX teams collaborate hand-in-hand with the industry coverage teams and leverage the coverage teams' relationships and expertise, which really helps out with pitching subject-matter expertise to clients and winning deals. HL RX is very siloed and doesn't get that benefit. Culture is dependent across offices, but I'd also say that as a whole HL RX's culture isn't as great as some other RX groups.

That being said, HL RX is still a very strong shop, obviously leaning towards creditor-side mandates but HL still gets on large debtor mandates, and working at HL RX would be a great learning experience. HL RX is also a strong name to have on your resume and would set you up well for post-IB opportunities. That being said, IMO a lot of the smaller EB RX experiences would likely be superior from a deal exposure and learning perspective.