UBS Review of Groups in the US
UBS is maybe the single most top-heavy bank group-wise in terms of full-service. To make sure people are not misled, here is a pretty broad overview of every relevant product & coverage group I am familiar with. I have free time and this forum was super helpful for me back when I recruited (way too long ago), so hopefully this is helpful. For reference, I left a year or so ago, but I know a lot of people are still there, so it should still be fairly accurate. Feel free to correct anything in the comments:
M&A: tons of work is just helping coverage groups that do not win M&A mandates ever. Culture here is notoriously bad, and hours are very long. One of the rare banks where M&A isn't a top-tier group. With that being said, still better than most UBS groups because hey, at least you'll get something to do on a live deal eventually, probably.
Tech, M&T, RELL: See all the discussion on UBS across this forum. Every single complaint about UBS on this forum is perfectly accurate for all three groups. I don't think any of them have any deals and haven't for a few years.
FIG: Only really does AM/WM deals, and maybe some FinTech. Insurance, and Bank subverticals are completely dead. With that being said, deal flow is not very strong as a whole, and most deals are going to be some kind of sponsor-led deal. Not too sure on culture, but from what I saw, the juniors have a lot of camaraderie but stay in pretty late. Unsure why they stay so late, the given group doesn't have that much flow at this point.
HC: Extremely political and long hours, again, unsure why becauseuse not have enough deal flow to justify the hours. The only reason not put in the Tech, M&T, RELL category is that it technically has had some deals, and the new HC Head, who is also head of CR, is an absolute rockstar of a banker.
Industrials: Camaraderie at the junior level is strong. However, hours are long, and it is one of the hardest-working groups in the bank. With that being said, hours are fewer than LevFin, and you get to work on live deals across all products instead of just pitches like other hard-working coverage groups. The group has a ton of subverticals, and at some point, you pretty much proto-specialize given how different each is. Some subverticals are elite compared to street, others are meh, and some basically do nothing except LevFin deals.
CR: Group head is one of, if not the best, bankers at UBS. Huge key-man risk. That being said, the culture there seems super nice, as do the people. As good a group as you'll get outside the top 3 groups within UBS.
ECM: Tons of hires, no real results, but also the ECM market is dead. Heard culture was good, and the hours were relatively less. Hard to truly judge because although minimal deal flow, it's not exactly like ECM as a whole has had a lot of activity anyway.
PFG: Good at their jobs in terms of raising capital for PE funds, and the culture seems chill. Not traditional IB, but it seems like a solid gig if interested in the type of work.
LevFin: Extremely buttoned-up culture, used to be a group where all the guys wore suits and ties, which remains culturally relevant. With that being said, very strong live deal experience. Everything you work on will be live, and UBS wins a ton of lead-left deals. Do not think it's necessarily toxic, but a very buttoned-up and collegiate environment.
Sponsors: Spun out of LevFin post-acquisition due to the desires of ex-CS seniors. UBS as a whole basically is a bank for sponsors, so this team is involved in everything. They still don't have a truly fully defined role outside of being the relationship guys for the sponsors, so on some deals, they basically do the job of LevFin, others, they do nothing, and others, they'll do random slides. Again, a rare UBS group with actual live deal flow. Chiller hours than LevFin by a lot. The staffing model is based on the sponsor, so some people work really long (but not LevFin) hours, and others barely work based on the deal flow of certain sponsors.
Edit: Might have underestimated Consumer, it's top 10 in its sector for YTD, though very few deals; very much dominated by being on Alani Nu - Celsius, Sycamore - Walgreens, and Supreme - EssilorLuxottica, though. Seems the group is whale hunters.
Pretty accurate
Wondering what's wrong with the views above? Am an incoming at UBS, so want to get a sense of whether anything is wrong above when deciding how to approach group placement.
M&A, Tech, M&T, RELL, HC, FIG are all pretty miserable, with bad hours but still bad deal flow from what I understand.
And bad bonus
I left M&T recently. Was working 80+ hours on all bs work for horrible ED / MDs. Truly miserable - no real deals. The only fee events are tier 2/3 roles on financings where you learn very little
Would venture to guess across all these groups that 80% of analysts and associates have never gotten the experience of building a sell side model and a CIM.
Pitches and credit memos for junior financing roles all day. Blows
Worked 2 years here and did not close a single new deal. Never worked on a CIM. Staffed on a few so-called high-probablity ones and the client never seriously treated us.
Worked 2 years and have literally never been on a real sell side deal, much less closed one
What about DCM?
They technically do "DCM", but the team barely has people. Don't really think they hire juniors, and this forum is mostly juniors.
Is sponsors the only semi decent group?
Well depends on what you want to do. If the goal is to get deal reps in/exits: LevFin/GIG/Sponsors/pockets of CR are the only good groups. Would think LevFin/GIG is a better experience than Sponsors at the junior level, but the downside is just more hours, even if it's live work.
Levfin and GIG are really sweaty but the best experience available at the bank. Sponsors probably the balance between experience to hours worked.
from what ive seen after the combined group split, every single junior in the most recent analyst class stayed on as an associate makign it hard to gauge exits lol. after the split sponsors has gotten much smaller and just owns the relationship. the actual execution is always done by product (levfin) and coverage. not entirely sure what sponsors does -- might play some limited role in origination (?) but everything else is done by other groups.
also worth noting that the sponsor based staffing model creates lopsided results in terms of junior learning experience. some accounts with long standing relationships with the levfin team (cd&r and kkr stand out as two prominent examples) will be a lot more active than other accounts
UBS career progression:
Don’t get deal reps -> can’t exit -> become an associate -> get laid off
Inaccurate to say “all execution is done by levfin”. I have worked on numerous deals where entire process or at least 75%+ was done by either sponsor juniors only with a LF QB, or by a mid-level LF with junior sponsors associate and analyst. Over half the sponsors group came directly out of levfin, they have same exact background (and in some cases, I have preferred working with sponsors junior team over levfin). Again with any group at UBS, some members are great, others are bad.
Also completely inaccurate to say CD&R and KKR longstanding relationships are out of levfin. You need to brush up on your history - on Canning with CD&R and Aziz with KKR. One was chairman of the bank that literally created UBS, the other helped Henry Kravis build his empire, both over decades. Yes - the product with which they built those relationships was leveraged finance, but by no means are those a “Levfin relationship”.
Didn’t the GIG group just advise on the $10B sale of GardaWorld to HPS Investment Partners? Sounds like a pretty decent deal.
The Industrials team has done a decent number of large-cap deals in the past year, by far the strongest coverage group in the bank, and has a lot of live flow in M&A and LevFin. Also was on the Rio Tinto - Arcadium $6.7Bn, the GE spinoff, Amcor - Berry $8.4Bn spin-off, and a few other large-caps and a bunch of mid-cap deals. The group is very busy, though, and the hours are long. Will say better culture and WLB than the other top group (LevFin). Post-combining with M&A, Sponsors isn't a top group anymore. If you have a lot of live deal experience and presumably the exits that follow, your only options are Industrials and LevFin.
How is FIG?
FIG is paradise
Used to be something till they nuked their insurance team which had an absolute top banker in the insurance space. Big fallout with management.
FIG is cooked. Poised to have the worst year in many years. Essentially no banks or insurance coverage left
The best UBS group is the one you escape
I mean, not really, it's not like UBS has absolutely 0 flow and therefore there has to be a best group based on where the flow is. Also, the top groups in UBS are clearly comparable to BB's on the street, think UBS as a overall falls flat to the other BB's in large part because the worst groups in UBS are literal net negatives some of which have zero overall flow and revenue,
Do you believe teams like HC, RELL, Tech and M&T run deficits?
UBS people must've made an alt given how many downvotes all the OP's comments have and the fact that every comment that agrees with OP has a downvote.
Sponsor work is so bad though. Not the best learning experience and feels not very value additive most times
That’s because sponsors doesn’t do any real work and takes all the credit
Honestly only reason I (and seemingly the rest of this forum) have them as top 3 in the bank is because it spun out of LevFin, and technically speaking, they are one of 3 groups with actual continuous live deal flow. I think to all within the firm, it's pretty clear that LevFin and Industrials are better actual junior learning/deal experiences. Sponsors, however, give you the very real perk of having a lot of deals on your resume with way fewer hours than the other 2 groups would have. I think from a meta perspective of exits (which most juniors here seem to want to optimize for), given it's a spin-out of LevFin, for better or worse, it should reflect the exits of LevFin, which is a group that genuinely deserves to be top 2 in the bank. IMO, pretty clear the actual top two is LevFin/GIG in whatever order with sponsors a distant third solely due to giving you live deal flow.
As I posted further above (which I’m going to receive MS on despite having been here 6 years and seen entire evolution of the bank over that period) my experience has been opposite on select occasions. I think levfin is a group that is still riding off coattails of the old group and structure. The group has quadrupled in size (I don’t recognize at least half their team now vs 2 years ago) and it isn’t remotely the same quality across the board as it used to be. Legacy levfin team are miles above the laterals and new joiners.
Sponsors took a chunk of both (good and bad) of old levfin group. There are plenty of deals I have worked on with exclusively sponsor team and zero levfin involvement, and have also done M&A buy side (real buy side, not the structuring fee for Levfin work) with their team where it was soley my sector team and sponsors team and they were incredibly helpful or led most of process. Of course same goes for levfin. But to batch either group as a one size fits all is just dumb since quality across both groups differs GREATLY at mid-junior level.
I think people are broadly missing the point of splitting the group in the first place - it was to have a group that CAN do Levfin work and pinch hit as needed, but to ALSO do the other work across products where it’s helpful to have extra hands on (ESPECIALLY on nuanced sponsor asks or asks where M&A refuses to provide staffing because the fee is too low for them to send junior resources). Anyone who thinks sponsors (at any bank on the street) is to own and run their own entire process (of any product) is braindead and doesn’t understand why investment banks have separate groups in the first place.
Tech is paradise
Video games are paradise
Leverage reads are paradise
Who is this rockstar C&R MD? What has he done?
advised on the mega albertsons/kroger merger that got nuked by Lina Khan.
UBS is so bad, the breakfees from mega mergers paid to the bank are better than 99% of deal fees our bank does. Its an actual cred to show.
Jon Levin, ex-retail head from CS, was known as a rainmaker within CS, but I am not from CR, so speaking only from his reputation from CS.
what about the new c&r head if jon is now global doing healthcare too
ex-retail head from CS. I am not a CR guy, but he was known as a top rainmaker within CS. Not sure how he is running 2 groups at once, but he is a CR guy, not a HC one. Think CR also hired a former co-head at Citi, so there's that. At least hiring people with pedigree and not dudes with 0-3 years of IB MD experience like some other groups.
What groups hiring 0-2 year MDs? Makes no sense
Not positive with that citi guy. He went to Stifel after citi and jumped around. Big red flag
.
this is true. most of these deals dont even have M&A people staffed on them (or a super minimal team of 2-3 people who dont do much)
I think that's just a reflection of how much internal sway LevFin has and how little M&A has. The LevFin seniors all think M&A is useless, and also many are a bit of control freaks/territorial over product team staffing, basically never staff them on anything LevFin related. For Celsius - Alani Nu, UBS was the sole advisor, and for Sycamore - Walgreens, they were the lead. Seems like it wasn't just a pure M&A tip, or else they'd be more below on the list of advisors from my experience. Mandates/UBS representation was definitely both in large part given to UBS because of a strong lending relationship with Celsisu from back in the day, and Sycamore. Just as a general comment, deals for UBS are rarely won out of the M&A group; I don't think any of them really have strong relationships or can execute well. M&A is a bit of a joke group; all deal flow relationships are derived out of a few MDs, the vast majority of whom are in LevFin/Sponsors/Industrials.
This sounds exactly like what happened / is happening at BofA, UBS is just a year or so behind.
Exuberance leading to overhiring across IB, particularly in the “wrong” sub verticals where it’s hard to gain share (TMT, middle market). Those groups are literal net negatives that eat into everyone else’s’ bonus pools. So the good performers in the stronger groups get pissed off and leave.
UBS and BofA must have by far the worst revenue per MD on the street.
UBS is basically the worst BoFA without the BoFA commercial banking or balance sheet to fall behind. To be serious though, there's maybe only 3 groups in UBS which wouldn't look out of place looking at revenues at BoFA, just completely different ballpark of bank.
True but BofA also has almost 100 middle market senior bankers that bring in nothing. Agree most other groups are at least somewhat respectable relative to UBS.
Both have their faults, not trying to turn this into a reverse dick measuring contest
Standard operating procedure in my group:
Analyst 1: Work hard to learn the job…somebody has to do these useless pitches / internal processes Analyst 2: Slack off as soon as new Analyst class arrives, regardless if leaving or not. Arrive no earlier than 11am from here on out. Go to the gym mid day Associate 0/1: Get your analysts to do all the work Associate 2/3: Get your analysts and new associates to do all the work; wait for auto promote to VP (if RIFd as an Associate it means you’re brain dead) VP: Have your juniors do all the work, refuse to check it, blame them when things are wrong. Wait to be promoted or RIF’d by VP3. ED: Have your juniors do all the work, refuse to check it, blame them when things are wrong. Make almost no effort to source business - never even signed an EL for something you sourced. Wait to be promoted based on half hearted “execution” or RIF’d by ED4 MD: Collect guranteed bonuses for 1-2 years (hopefully), mail it in the entire time. Half assed pitch after pitch. Blame juniors for being lazy and coming in at 11am Group Head: Collect guranteed bonuses for 1-2 years (hopefully), mail it in the entire time. Half assed pitch after pitch. Blame juniors for being lazy and coming in at 11am Head of Banking: Hold Town Halls quarterly to gaslight everyone into how well things are going. Collect guaranteed bonuses for 2-3 years. Blame legacy UBS and CS people and RIF a few of them every couple months to ensure toxicity stays as high as possible without the layoffs being large enough to make bloomberg
Well that’s how UBS wins and has a competitive edge. No one but the analyst is responsible for the outcome. Clients typically don’t like analyst work so there you go
this is 100% accurate lmao.
80% of the work in the group gets done by overstaffed AN1s
Thanks, actually explains a lot of how UBS has multiple groups without flow for years. Look, I am not going to be out here and claim that I am unbiased or anything, but I feel like the data + the anecdotes and experiences shared here make it pretty obvious to everyone that UBS is the most top-heavy full-service bank. If you're a prospect, gotta really ask yourself if it's worth risking taking an offer here when 80% of groups literally are value negatives with bad culture.
You are the biggest hypocrite and probably one of those same seniors
Lots of directors and EDs don’t do shit and just coast. Juniors would be in a better spot if seniors actually did their job.
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