Rothschild Reputation

Rothschild is a really prestigious boutique and has been around for a very very long time. It is highly regarded in Europe for M&A and RX and does big deals there. In the US it does more middle market sized deals for M&A and larger deals for RX.

Rothschild RX in NYC is very well regarded, has smarter people, gets good deal flow, and tends to have good exit opportunities. It's M&A advisory business is good too but nothing to write home about and is probably a mid-tier MM shop. That being said, Rothschild is a great name to have on your resume and will open up opportunities.

Very selective as well as they only recruit from five schools: UPenn, NYU, Michigan, UVA, and Babson. They are also supposed to have a great / strong culture but will work you hard and has a reputation for paying street or slightly below street.

Comparing Rothschild to a BB, in most cases you would probably take a BB over Rothschild M&A. Even at a lower tier BB like DB or UBS you would still work on larger deals which could open up more exit opportunities but I don't think it's necessarily a mistake to take Rothschild M&A if you like it better over the lower-tier BB. If you get Rothschild RX, I would definitely take that over lower-tier or mid-tier BBs if you have any interest in the space.

I would consider Houlihan Lokey to be an Elite Boutique. It easily has the best MM M&A practice in the US and is 1st in the League Tables year after year for MM M&A. It has one of the top RX practice as well usually coming in 1st in the League Tables both worldwide and in the US. Lastly it has the one of the best Fairness Opinions / Valuation Advisory practices in the world too. I would consider HL to be unique firm that is best-in-class at everything that it does. So if you get HL RX or HL M&A, I'd take that over Rothschild's corresponding groups.