Top Corporate Banking Groups across Big 5 in Canada?

Hi All, 

I wanted to get some opinion on views for the Big 5 Toronto Corporate Banking groups (BMO/CIBC/TD/Scotia/RBC)

I would really appreciate peoples' thoughts on how the different corporate banking groups rank amongst eachother in Canada in terms of deal flow, learning, WLB, and culture and how big the differences are between them. 

I'm specifically most interested in BMO / CIBC Corporate Banking Groups. 

SBs for good answers!

 

Having some CB experience I would gun for CIBC rather than BMO due to the higher starting analyst base (85k versus 75k). Not sure about the other banks but Scotia also has a solid CB division, and I think RBC is a little leaner in terms of CB hiring etc. In terms of groups anything other than metals and mining would be good, think about the industry revenue and cash profile and ability to service debt and you will see why M&M isn't that active amongst CB groups compared to infrastructure for example, and that should help you decide activity levels amongst the other groups as well. Personally I would go for more of a broad group like DIG to get experience on diff clients and have more transferability if you want to later down the road.

 
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Having some CB experience I would gun for CIBC rather than BMO due to the higher starting analyst base (85k versus 75k). Not sure about the other banks but Scotia also has a solid CB division, and I think RBC is a little leaner in terms of CB hiring etc. In terms of groups anything other than metals and mining would be good, think about the industry revenue and cash profile and ability to service debt and you will see why M&M isn't that active amongst CB groups compared to infrastructure for example, and that should help you decide activity levels amongst the other groups as well. Personally I would go for more of a broad group like DIG to get experience on diff clients and have more transferability if you want to later down the road.

Thanks so much for the detailed answer. Can you speak a little to the culture at the groups you mentioned? Which is better for junior development/WLB between DIG at CIBC CB vs. non-MM BMO CB?

Also do you know how time from A2A is between the two? Also, are league tables a bad measure to compare the two groups in question (CIBC looks like it comes way below BMO in every category)?

 

Culture is very group and bank dependant, no real answer for that but overall hours arent too bad and are standard across groups as mentioned in other posts on WSO.

A2A is similar to IB structure. And league tables can paint diff stories depending on how they are structured, at the end of the day as a junior they shouldn't be that larger if a factor as long as you are comparing big 5

 

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