Totally ignorant question

I'm sorry for the following elementary questions, but I need a clear answer.

  1. Is MM(middle market) and boutique used interchangeably? If there are differences, tell me what it is. As far as I know the MM deal is below 1billion$

  2. Let's say there is an Investment bank. It provides M&A advisory services to its clients, but it doesn't perfor any underwriting or lending to the clients. In this case is this firm considered as a investment bank, or is just a financial advisory firm.

  3. Reffering to the firm just described above,can the firm concentrate on the long-term goals more without conflicts of interest than firms pursuing underwriting of lending activities? I don't know how to think about this issue. Please somebody give me an answer. Your insights will be very helpful!

4 Comments
 
  1. To some degree it is. Generally, when people refer to boutique they are talking about the Greenhills, Blackstones, Moelis, etc. of the world.

  2. Depends on how the firm markets itself. There are several middle market firms that market themselves as investment banks, because they do not just provide M&A services, but also capital raising and genreal corporate advisory.

  3. I am not sure I understand your question complete. If a firm does not participate underwriting you can make the arguement that they are free of conflicts of interest and may provide the best advise to their client.

 
Best Response
  1. I think boutique is a generic term used for anything thats not a bulge bracket. MM is also a generic term used for any place that doesn't do large cap deals. So are all boutiques middle markets? No. Are all MM boutiques... as far as I know, yes. Think of Evercore/Lazard which are considered boutique, but they do large deals. They are not MM banks. But then consider a no name shop that does small deals, they are both MM and boutique.

  2. I agree with the above poster, depends how the firm markets themselves. From what I've seen people go with the Investment Bank genre over financial advisory for whatever reason.

  3. You mean since they're not floating anything or taking anything onto their BS? Ummm... I dont think this is a real issue. AND correct me if I'm wrong, but the old-school investment banks would add value VIA taking on float risk, it has since evolved to the bulk of value being added through advisory services. My explanation may be a little half baked, but it seems like you're trying to come up with a "why our bank" type answer and trying to say how "your bank is better positioned in the L/T," I dont think this is a good way to put it. Smaller banks are typically focused in advisory and not in cap mkt activity because there are generally far more barriers to entry for a small shop to engaged in cap mkt services.

 

As an aside, if you're trying to appeal to a "why us?" at a smaller shop you'd want to highlight:

  • lean deal teams
  • opportunity to step-up and take on responsibility as it comes up as opposed to be a plug-and-chug monkey at a BB just shooting numbers into a template M&A model 24/7, at a boutique you'd do a lot of that too, but you'd get your hands on a lot of different areas.
  • opportunity to work closely with seasoned industry veterans
  • and learn something unique about that firm specifically, and speak to why that is something that appeals to you. I interviewed at a place where a lot of the bankers came from accounting backgrounds, corp law backgrounds, and IB backgrounds... which was very unique to this firm, so I basically said how I'm really excited to work with people with very diverse backgrounds and see how everyone's very different perspective comes together... learn from people with very difference experiences/specialties... etc....
 

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