RBC M&A - NY I Hear it is Fucked Right Now....

Anyone have any knowledge of RBC M&A right now (NY). I hear that it is absolutely fucked and juniors are getting cranked (20 hours days). My heart goes out to you guys, hopefully there are good exits coming your way. 

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From my understanding it is a unique situation. They really have been positioning themselves for explosive growth for the past couple years, and have gotten there. Not to mention the increased deal flow, its an aggressive growing bank so I guess they are trying to get everything the can in a unique environment. From what I hear they are short staffed and need bodies. 

 

I was there through the end of 2020, and it sounds like the same story it was then. It's a lot more deal flow than it used to be (for RBC), which is great, but made worse by some very incompetent mid-level folks who don't know how to manage up or down, and make the juniors lives hell. Which causes a neverending cycle of juniors leaving, piling on more work for the people who stayed.

For what it's worth, the senior team are actually  knowledgeable and effective in my opinion. The global head is too intense though, and I think it's reflected.

 
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I spent 3 years in the M&A group in RBC’s New York office and I actually made a WSO account specifically to respond to this post.  Full disclosure. But I felt the need to set the record straight here. There’s no denying that banking is a tough job, and being in a product group like RBC M&A is certainly hard work. However, I have a tremendous amount of respect for much of the M&A team there. The group head is a genuinely compassionate person who cares about his team members, and there are a number of others in VP and Director roles who do as well. I’m still in touch with several of my old colleagues and likely will be for many years to come. I left to pursue a buy-side role, but out of personal interest, not out of spite. My time in RBC M&A provided me with a ton of live deal experience, very strong modeling skills, and unmatched client exposure compared to most other junior banking positions. It’s easy to hide behind a screen name and make claims about a group you’ve never worked in, but anyone who feels like they’re on the fence about making a decision, please feel free to reach out to me and we can have a conversation. I’m happy to discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly, but I felt I needed to weigh in here with some nuance. 

 

Go ask the folks in industrials. Dogshit hours, dogshit exist, dogshit bonuses, dogshit culture, but they still come to campus info sessions with all the life gone from their eyes and tell us it’s a great place to be with 60hr weeks.

 

It really depends on industry, product, and geography, but overall they've been relatively somewhat stagnant over the past decade (in terms of market share and league tables they've continuously been "on the cusp" of BBs over the past decade). It depends on what you consider market share though. A common misconception is that the BBs are a monolithic group of banks that maintain a status above all other banks, but that's really not true and the BB field has separated significantly over the past decade. RBC is now closer to being a "BB" than ever before, but that's only because the gap between DB and UBS (especially DB) and the other BBs has increased significantly as those two banks have lost market share, so in a way RBC is closer to the end of the BB field. However, at the same time, independents + whatever Jefferies is has taken significant market share against all balance sheet banks, so in a way they've leapfrogged RBC, thus making RBC's position relatively stagnant.

I do think RBC's revenue numbers reflect this. In FY-21 RBC's IB division recorded around ~$2.1bn USD of revenues, which is closer to DB ($3.0bn) and UBS ($3.2bn) than ever, but there's still a sizable distance, while you have banks like Jefferies ($4.4bn) and Evercore ($3.2bn) that have completely leapfrogged RBC's growth over the past decade.

 

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