Restructuring Glaze Session

Let’s get it going. Want to hear everyone’s views on why RX is the superior group.

I’ll start - the intellectual stimulation I get from just reading about one RX deal is greater than learning the entirety of the traditional M&A landscape.

24 Comments
 
Controversial

I'll start

  1. You're just re-packaging/working the PE dumpster i.e., you're diving into what PE did, meaning you don't learn how to identify fresh opportunities and instead you only troubleshoot someone's work (business' owner/PE).
  2. You don't originate ideas/you don't develop an eye for business opportunism/industry/etc., instead it feels like you're doing only homework (you sit into your office, and just need to wait someone to bring you a distressed company so you can start crunching their numbers - no opportunity to sell opportunities by own initiative/because you have a good eye for opportunities  - kills all the hustle attitude, so it's extremely passive (but I heard RX guys are usually passive... so maybe you'll enjoy it?)
  3. You don't develop selling experience/storytelling, which is the #1 most important skill you can have in business (anticipating it: a 363 sale is just a cheap asset for buyers, so you're input isn't driving the sale).
  4. Credit/legal heavy, and less strategic (growth/expansion - which is what really businesses care about in 90% of cases) - which means that the most interesting work is done on legal side, because all the "fun" of RX hardos seems to be about learning legal things
  5. No relationship building with clients to learn about their businesses/etc. - bottom line, all you learn is that "lots of debt + market downturn = bad", which doesn't develp the same eye for business
  6. almost all companies that you'll be dealing with are ShitCos, because companies that are trully worthwhile to analyze/have great business models don't end up in RX - PEs inject money to keep their stakes. Only failed businesses (debt/market) are left to die/default. 
incentives trumph ethics
 

As someone in RX IB, I wouldn't classify RX IB and RX Co together lol, imo the latter is more interesting work, even if it pays slightly less

 
Most Helpful

I’m sorry PJT RSSG rejected you, glad everything worked out ok!

Jokes aside, as someone who used to work in an RX group, I do agree ppl are overly obsessed with it, but some of the criticisms here lack nuance/ and most are irrelevant for jrs anyways.

1. Agree, you’re mostly cleaning up existing problems vs thinking about new business ideas
2. Somewhat wrong; you might not be thinking of business ideas, but many transactions have bespoke structure. If you’re looking to exit to Corp dev, agree RX is not for you; if ur staying in finance, especially in areas beyond pure vanilla PE (might be shocking to you that such places exist…) then it’s also important to think about appropriate cost of capital and engineering returns a la structure
3. Wrong; every deal u have to market the structure / RSA to non-negotiating parties + the whole time u have to sell ur structure’s merits to the other side + you have to sell underlying business plan (which are usually hockey stick projections as bad as / worse than the shit peddled by M&A) w a straight face. All of which require the same level of salesmanship / story-telling + a level of intellectual rigor that comes w dealing w sharper / inherently more skeptical investors vs the gullible boards that buy into the pipe dreams that M&A bankers sell (see success rate of M&A)
4. Somewhat agreed, but boiling it down to legal is an over simplification. It’s more about structuring / financial engineering via different instruments and capital structures; very different from purely legal
5. Agree on recurring relationships within certain industries, but more than compensated with relationships with relationships at Sponsors + distressed hedge funds / credit investors. RE: business sense, instead of learning about “strategic growth” you learn something even more valuable: what goes wrong w these pipedream plans that the “Chad M&A Megaminds” think up; failure to recognize synergies, nuances of working capital dynamics when growing, failure to math capital structure to duration of value creation - which most M&A folks would not double click on in the first instance. The learning opportunity is equally as valuable, just the inverse of M&A (you see what doesn’t work, vs in M&A you just sell); orients you to look down before you look up, a skill that the best investors emphasize.

 

Sure, not saying that cashier at Walmart > RX, just that the overhyped/"superiority" is hardly justified. 

Worth as well for you and some RX hardos to review some M&A/PE plays that ended up in RX hands (e.g., Caesars/TXU/Neiman etc.), so you'll appreciate that traditional M&A has its own playbook that creates the corporate structures and debt allocation among them that the RX teams then look at i.e., carve-outs/set up of HoldCos + SubCos for the financing/whatever corp transaciton and structure: like ring fencings + carve-outs + spin-offs/listing of divisions, et. (caveat: because we also consider cost of capital)/covenant negotiations to get the financing and so on.

At the end of the day, the roots of PE are in debt (aka KKR's "Merchants of Debt" nickname in the 70/80s), so again, is just a matter of being in the value creation side or the cleaning side, and classic M&A even at an IB gives you a better view of some value creation processes.

Anyway, my view is that creating the upside will always be more fun career-wise than beating each other over who takes the reigns over a HVAC company in a rural market that is in chapter 33. 

Left also another comment in a similar thread that if I truly enjoyed RX, I would be a lawyer at Kirkland as it's more intellectually stimulating to come with a novel plan based on some bankruptcy law loopholes/contract weaknesses that makes my client improve its recoveries by +35% than just running 53 scenarios on different swaps/capital structures to position him for a +7% higher payoff based on its position.

incentives trumph ethics
 

You’re all idiotic for shitting on each other’s high level career paths. This is like when Tuck or Brown grads shit on Cornell grads. You’re all lucky to be where you’re at. It’s senseless to have a dick measuring contest here. Shut up and be grateful to be where you’re at.

 

Not from Cornell, but lose this mindset man. Idolizing prestige and worrying endlessly about how others view your career path/school/firm etc. will never allow you to make a name for yourself and do something truly great.

 

My love life got primed and sold to a stalking horse (the TMT guys at Goldman). I haven't slept since Bed Bath & Beyond. Ur right it's overrated

 

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