Thoughts on Guggenheim in 22/23?
Just started an MBA at a IB target wanted to get thoughts on the current state of Guggenheim. Saw the post on "Another Way To Classify Boutiques" and found it be helpful since there's less information available about these firms at our school. We send a few kids to Guggenheim every year, Lazard Evercore and Moelis recruit on campus as well but we don't have much of a pipeline to Centerview/ PJT. The below comment doesn't paint a great picture of the firm and I'm curious if others echo this sentiment. Looked at the recent transactions on their website and was surprised to see the number of financing mandates (>50%), non-RX advisory mandates also seem to be mostly in the sub-500m bucket going back 5-6 pages. They don't have a team/ bios page, so it's tough to pin down where senior bankers came from and what they cover
More or less. Pre GFC, Guggenheim was really just a money manager, and a good one at that, Scott mineard and $300bn in AUM. Then came Alan Schwartz and his buddies from Bear. At the outset they did pretty well, cracking Top 10 US M&A in ~2014-2016. The problem is they employed an eat what you kill commission based model with a sparse set of rainmakers from across the street who had no vested interest in the development of the firm (culture, people, recruiting etc.) and a lack of a strong internal network. If you look at the other new wave EBs they all have a strong core group of bankers who collectively lead the platform:
CVP - Effron and his faction of the old UBS
Moelis - Ken and his faction of the old UBS
PJT - Taubman and his MS M&A and MediComms posse
It's still a good place to work and the comp is great. But they're deal flow has significantly weakened. They did well last year but as the saying goes "when the tide goes out, you can see who's swimming naked". Not a LT whore, but 30 deals and $8bn in volume this year speaks for itself
Gugg is a solid firm but they are not an independent advisor. Exit ops are fine and you can always lateral to a better bank. That being said, Gugg has other tentacles in research, s&t, investment, etc so most people regard it more as a full service bank rather than a boutique. From a legacy perspective, well they have Scott Minerd but he’s not in IB
Solid shop like others have said but not an advisor to blue chip corporates. Have definitely moved down market in recent years with their MM build out in Atlanta, Chicago and Boston. Good comp at the Associate level. If you’re goal is to just do a year or two and exit to industry I wouldn’t be too concerned but ultimately in this industry you are your deal sheet
B
Overhyped on WSO (my roommate worked there this summer) but still a solid shop
Way overhyped…I think many here don’t have access to league tables. Not a shitty firm by any means but there was a long stretch of time here where people were going a bit overboard with it. WSO did that with RBC as well for a bit.
Jeff over gugg in exits and prestige?
I know they're significantly lower than they have been in past, but I think Gugg was ranked something like 18 last year in overall deal volume. So to those who say they "peaked" 5 years ago, not sure that's the case. Could be that this year is just an anomaly.
It’s not an anomaly. Gugg and some of the similar scale banks are more up and down than the usual suspects.
Bumpp - anyone else?
They’ve been known to hand out early offers with short deadlines
They did this at my MBA program as well in order to ensure their yield, the % of their offers that were accepted. If you’re good candidate (you’ll know this as the process winds down based on Interview invites and other factors) then I’d go through the main process and not worry. Only saw middling candidates take the early bait, a few other banks employ this tactic
As you mentioned, Guggenheim was a strong US M&A player around 4-7 years ago but has slipped since. Not sure they were ever overhyped given their compensation and huge mandates such as Disney / Fox, IBM / Red Hat, etc.
They're particularly good in TMT, HC, and RX. Other groups aren't bad - they did a $3BN energy sell-side a few months ago and hired the head of consumer from Rothschild.
All that being said, there has been a lot of turnover at the senior level. For example, SVB took one of their rainmaker HC MDs to build out their practice. Gugg has also been expanding their middle market group, which is one of the reasons why you're seeing smaller deals compared to before. The other big reason is just the general market downturn.
These banks (non BBs, independent advisors, EBs, whatever you want to call them) tend to heavily shift around the league tables, so it's hard to evaluate on a year-by-year basis. Overall, I'd say Gugg is a solid platform and if you're in one of their stronger groups, you'll have a great career.
Incoming SA at their TMT group. Wondering what my exit opps may look like.
You will have chances, just focus on getting better/ready for recruiting
could you dm me ab your Superday experience w/ them?
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$21bn in the last week isn’t bad
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