If y’all had the choice would you rather be in a top 5 public finance group in one of the “more desirable” groups like P3/HC or a traditional coverage group at a lower tier bank? (Think BNP Paribas, Nomura, SocGen etc.) Curious to hear your guys’ thoughts
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Probably the better brand name
Bumping for traction
I'd take BB PubFin if you are doing Infra/P3 or HC work. My short rationale is below: 1) Better branding at a BB 2) Debt financing experience at a BB is better as you should be lead left on large/complex transactions compared to mostly passive / co-manager roles at SocGen, BNP, etc. 3) On M&A you'd get more reps at the "lower tier" banks, however, the BB Infra/P3 and HC teams do fairly large M&A deals (albeit at a much lower volume) 4) Equity financing exposure will be better at the "lower tier" banks 5) If you choose to leave PubFin, you'd already have a network built up at a BB, which should make lateraling easier
Thank you very much! What are some shops you would accept an offer from over BB pubfin?
Forget which banks even do this - I know like JPM does. Be careful if it is just like muni offerings, you're not going to get a very good skillset doing that and you'd be better off doing M&A in almost any size capacity.
I'd probably pick M&A up until the point where you don't get looks for PE. At that point you're a lateral jump to a better bank / group anyway so may as well take the brand name (and by brand name it's really probably just GS, MS, JPM, maybe Citi - not even sure these guys all do this). Some of those banks you mention are better brands in Europe but like I wouldn't do BNP US over JPM Pubfin. I would do like Baird, Harris Williams, Piper, HL, etc. M&A over Pubfin.
I agree with a lot of what you are saying, however, I want to clarify a couple things.
In PubFin the best banks don't necessarily follow traditional M&A hierarchy. For example, Citi was hands down the best platform for decades. Yet, they exited the business entirely in 2023 after a couple of "down" years (I think they finished ~5 in the league tables). I mention this because league tables don't correlate 1:1 with revenue in PubFin. The HC and P3 teams significantly outearn their "general muni" peers on a $/bond basis and even more so when you tack on M&A / advisory fees. Some of the "stronger" HC and P3 teams at BBs are below (in alphabetical order):
If you are hunting for PE exits, I 100% agree on picking a Baird, HL, Piper, etc. M&A role over PubFin makes sense. At the end of the day more M&A reps outweigh a strong financing experience with some M&A exposure. However, if you are not focused on PE exits I'd value the brand name of a BB more. Having the BB name is likely to be more helpful for MBA programs, corporate-focused exits, and other non-PE buyside roles (i.e. asset management, credit jobs, endowments, etc.).
You do know Baird/HL/Piper are all notches above SocGen/Nomura/BNP for M&A as per the OP right?
Thanks, I'm well aware. I also posted the comment above which said BB NFP HC / P3 > SocGen/Nomura/BNP etc.
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