Top Pubfin in strong group or low-tier IB?
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
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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