Ranking firms

Lehman has no M&A group.

Lehman M&A

http://www.lehman.com/ibd/product/ma/

The Prince of Wall Street

http://www.princeofwallstreet.com

what do you guys feel about the financial sponsors group at the ML and LB?  which product/industry group is typicaly the best gateway to a PE job afterwards, both at an analyst and associate level?  Thanks

The website is wrong. Lehman has no M&A group.

I actually heard that FIG was one of MER's top groups?

http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2007/12/13/lehman-gets-an-ma-boost/

where did wsj get all these lehman brothers m&a facts from then?

"In fact, Lehman has raked in almost $1.1 billion in M&A advisory fees for the calendar year to date, a 28% increase from a year earlier, according to Dealogic."

They do M&A in group man. ie. the teleoms group does all telecom m&a executions -- same with Goldman. Jeez, you don't need an m&a group to do m&a.

ahhh gotcha. thanks for the info =)

Check your facts Prince of Wall Street - preferrably not from doing a quick search of their website.  As Wharton said, LEH does all M&A within their industry groups.

FIG at GS is a great group, if you have the opportunity to go there, do it. All banks do M&A work (i.e. 'have an M&A franchise' they talk about on website, that gets ranked, etc.) but nystateofmind and Wharton04 are right that those two do it out of the industry groups -- there's no dedicated M&A group at either bank. Several other banks went to that model after the tech bust, but LEH and GS are the only ones that have stuck with it. It fits them well because they both aggressively deemphasize the star culture. In LEH's case I think it hurts recruiting bc without an M&A group there's no one group that has off the chart exits, but it has the positive effect that most kids going to LEH aren't as worried about exit opps they just love the firm itself and it's culture. In GS's case all groups have strong exits so it doesn't matter. Neither Lehman nor ML is strong in Sponsors and Lev Fin -- if you want to do that stuff you should think DB or CS. Would have added JP and MS a year ago, but jobs at JP SLF aren't looking safe and MS moved summer analysts this past summer in Sponsors to other groups and gave like 2 offers in Lev Fin. As far as Blackstone M&A goes, Princeofwallstreet is kind of off the mark. He's right they aren't a top M&A player, but they do have strong exits, just not to Blackstone PE, which hires from outside the firm.

Wow Ranger, that was the dumbest question I've ever seen posted. =/