Ones that come to mind include Lincoln International, William Blair, and Robert Baird.
Any other insights?
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Those 3 are definitely the right ones.
Houlihan, BMO, and Lazard MM also have a fairly strong presence
Does Houlihan have a specific coverage team in the Chiraq region? Difficult to find info on them.
Houlihan's Industrials Group is in Chicago... Which is both their best group and The top group in the Industrials segment industry-wide
MD's in Healthcare, Industrials and Food & Consumer.
Health Care Group, also one of their top is based out of Chicago. From my interview there, I recall Healthcare Being their top coverage followed by Industrials in Chicago.
Lincoln International and William Blair are probably the two best that have their HQ in Chicago (Baird's HQ is in Milwaukee). Baird, BMO, HLI, Lazard MM, and RJ are reputable MMs that have offices in Chicago.
Slightly off topic but for you guys on WSO looking for FT: I'm pretty sure William Blair just posted some job openings on the WSO Job board.
Pretty solid. Maybe add Mesirow financial to the list?
Mesirow is definitely solid and well respected in certain sub-sectors (e.g. packaging, labeling). It's still a tier below the big MM names, except in areas where it has strong industry expertise.
Any one have any thoughts on good boutiques in Chicago?
Guggenheim is headquartered in Chicago.
Wouldn't necessarily peg gugg as MM
Pretty sure Sagent has an office there too
Livingstone is solid afaik and Piper Jaffray has a decent presence
Really small office actually. Pretty much only DCM out there, some FIG.
PJ or Livingstone?
.
If you want to work in Chicago, you're going to have a significantly better experience at an HQ than a satellite office. As such, WB and Lincoln are the best ops in Chicago.
Baird, Blair, Lincoln, HL all have a big presence and execute out of here (fwiw the satellite office myth doesn't really exist with MM firms as industry group = execution). GS, Citi, BAML, Lazard MM all here as well. Since the thread is about MM firms I'd say the peer group is Baird, Blair and HL.
Thanks for the points. I spoke to a buddy comparing some of the above mentioned MM firms. Is it accurate to say that these guys work you just as hard as BBs, but pay you slightly less?
I know a buddy at Lincoln whose doing well above the street all-in comp wise. Working similar hours though.
Old roomie was at one of these firms. Pay (bonus) was slightly worse but sometimes you get other minor perks like a higher seamless allotment ($$$). Hours were heavily dependent on group - his group was a sweatshop but there were also others at his firm where some analysts averaged like 60 hours over an extended period. I should note this was also pre-weekend / lifestyle policies and whatnot so things have probably changed.
Anyone have any opinions of thoughts on Dresner Partners?
Never seen them in a pitch. For all of the senior people, the deal sheet looks incredibly light in 2014-Present on CapIQ.
Dresner is way too small to be followed by Capital IQ, for the low end MM IB's (defined as 10-100M in transaction size) you have to go to their website to see accurate deal flow. Note these firms (not Dresner in particular, but smaller chicago boutiques) are busier than their deal flow suggest, but they take on lots of shitty assignments that never find a buyer. When i was an auditor they sold a company i was auditing, it was only 50-60M in revenue.
If you look at the website, it tells the same story. Very weak deal flow given the structure.
http://www.dresnerpartners.com/news/index.asp?menu_id=242
There are plenty of other boutiques that would be better options than Dresner.
I've done finance in Chicago and I can tell you unequivocally that the strongest bulge bracket is Goldman (Byron Trott is there after all) and the strongest MM is William Blair. This is in terms of deal flow, deal size and overall reputation and my source is from speaking with many senior level bankers and private equity professionals, not undergrads or ppl with less than 3 years of banking experience.
Byron Trott hasn't worked there in over half a decade... Any undergrad or ppl with less than 3 years of banking experience might be able to tell you that.
I may be wrong about the minor detail on where Trott is at this point of his career but please let me know how I'm wrong about my 2 main points. At the end of the day, if you're an analyst and don't have an interest as a career banker, you should be thinking about the best buyside exit opps. If you're in Chicago, that means most BB (GS, MS, CS, JPM have the best exits there) and in MM the best exits are with Blair, HL and maybe Baird, but you're most likely going to a lower MM PE firm cuz analysts there have very little exposure to complicated cap structures and mostly doing vanilla M&A or far right on some tiny equity offering.
As Cayo275 stated, Byron doesnt work at goldman anymore. He does run his merchant bank out of Chicago, though.
Houlihan Lokey - Also has a strong presence with solid deal flow in food and beverage as well as the industrial group already mentioned above. Hours seem to be above average there, and pay seems to be higher than most in the area.
William Blair - I've heard good things, and I've seen them place analysts at top PE shops after the analyst stint.
Livingstone Partners - I've seen some really solid work come out of this shop.
How would you compare Livingstone to BMO in terms of exit opps?
I'm not sure. I would think BMO would carry more brand recognition if you want your exit ops to be in credit.
Maybe get on LinkedIn and do some searches for people who used to work for each firms and see where they went afterwards and which one fits better with what you want to do.
As someone who knows people who've worked at both Baird and William Blair in Chicago, I'd say that Blair definitely has the leg up on Baird. From the teams to the office (actual building), Blair was very impressive. Also, they're moving to a brand new building right on the river once it's finished in 2017.
Bahahaha. They are in the same building. Brilliant.
Have you been in the actual offices? Like the Blair floor vs the Baird Floor? Clearly not, because if you had you'd know what i mean.
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