Growing up in New York, I was never big fan of the city, however I always wanted to pursue a career in IB. After trying to look everywhere on Wall Street Oasis and not finding too much information regarding IB in Atlanta, Charlotte, Chicago and Houston. I made this guide with the intent of helping others in my shoes. Below is a list of banks in each city that I gather and ranked base on exit opp. Open to suggestion and advice.
Atlanta T1 Barclays, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan T2 SunTrust, Houlihan Lokey T3 Raymond James, KBW, Sander O’ Neil, Stephens
Charlotte T1 Bank of America Securities (Lev Fin), Wells Fargo, Lazard T2 Jefferies, William Blair, Piper Jaffray T3 Raymond James, SunTrust, Stephens T4 Fifth Third, Regions
Chicago T1 Citi, Greenhill, Moelis & Co., Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan T2 Lazard, Perella Weinberg Partners, Rothschild, Credit Suisse, Barclays, William Blair, Evercore, Baird T3 Bank of America Securities, Jefferies, Houlihan Lokey, UBS, Piper Jaffray T4 BMO, Cowen, Cain Brothers & Co., Mizuho, Lincoln International T5 Stephens, Stifel, Raymond James
Houston T1 Evercore, Jefferies, Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co., Citi T2 Bank of America Securities, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, Barclays, Petrie Partners, Piper Jaffray Simmons Energy, Goldman Sachs, Moelis & Co. T3 RBC Richardson Barr, Wells Fargo, BMO, Intrepid T4 Houlihan Lokey, UBS, Lazard, Greenhill, Guggenheim T5 SunTrust, PJ Solomon, Stephens, Raymond James, KeyBanc
Toronto T1 Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Securities, Barclays, RBC T2 Credit Suisse, BMO, TD, CIBC, Evercore, Greenhill, Lazard T3 Canaccord, Scotia, National Bank, Raymond James, Citi, UBS
Absolutely ass backwards that you have Jefferies and TPH in Tier 3 in Houston
Jefferies and TPH dominates in Houston, I agree.
OP I think your Chicago rankings are outdated as well. Citi is one of the top BBs in Chicago and PWP is a brand new office (just to point out a few)
Tier 1 Houston - EnergyNet Inc.
Also - Citi and Barclays are definitely Tier 1. Greenhill is practically nonexistent on the energy deal scene, no idea why you placed them in your first tier. Moelis opened their office in Houston like two years ago and, although they appear to be growing, they're no where near the top of the boutique mountain (1A - JEFF/EVR 1B - TPH/Simmons) in Houston. Intrepid should be in there somewhere just on Skip McGee's presence alone.
No offense, but the entire Houston rankings you posted are completely out of whack.
There was a Houston thread recently:
https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/houston-investment-banking-2019
I saw, however I ranked my list on exit opps over deal flow and prestige. For example, if I ranked deal flow in Atlanta, then SunTrust is probably number one.
Exit opps are determined by your experience. Regional coverage groups are not giving you the same exit ops as the industry and product groups. They tend to focus on middle market deals while the marquee groups go for the traditionally sized BB transactions.
Not much activity from any of the tier one ATL shops, all small teams doing minimal m&a. Suntrust is HQ'd in ATL, and has almost all of its top talented based in Atlanta. This leads to bigger deals and better exit opps. JPM's Atlanta office is CCB, not IBD. Barclays I am admittedly unsure on. RayJ will be more competitive in Atlanta as well due to multiple coverage groups and product groups having teams there. Stephens is also well-positioned in Atlanta. Houlihan Lokey only has business services coverage to my knowledge, but a lot of its TAS is there as well.
Barclays Citi, Jefferies, Petrie and Intrepid should all be top tier in Houston along with MS, EVR and TPH. These Tier 1 firms are truly the heavy hitters in Houston either through sheer A&D volume or complexity of transactions.
Add UBS (bullish after their influx of senior bankers), Richardson Barr and Simmons (Tier 1b?) in tier 2, and I would drop Greenhill and Moelis there as well both of whom have had not the best deal flow.
Guggenheim, RBC and BMO should converge to T3, and add TD, Scotiabank and CIBC. Tier 4 would be Suntrust, RayJ, HLHZ, and maybe some of the Euro financing offices, but its splitting hairs.
Blair should be tier 1, at minimum tier 1b in Chicago, arguably some of the best placements each year. Baird is also underrated in Chicago.
I get the point is exit ops, but in regional areas, the firms that do the most deals and have the most prestige regionally will have the best exit ops in their area. If you're going to post something like this take the time to see who really places well.
Just delete your Houston rankings because they are not anywhere near accurate
Ironic, given that you have Greenhill, GS, and Moelis in Tier 1 for Houston.
What qualifies you to make such a wide ranging and definitive ranking?
There are plenty of these types of posts that are much more accurate than yours. I don’t know how you can say that you haven’t found good information on regional banks, use the search function.
This is not helpful if you don’t know what you are talking about (and I can tell from your ridiculous Houston ranking that you do not).
I never understand why the fuck people make threads like these. They always end up being wildly inaccurate. For example, if you had checked out the Chicago IB page currently on the front page (https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/top-chicago-ib), you'd know that MS no longer staffs juniors there, and therefore can't be classified as Tier 1. Piper Chicago is also nowhere in the same ballpark as Baird or Blair. Smh.
Good Stuff, Thank you! Would you say these places rank similarly for those who have ER shops?
Thank you kind sir, i'll keep that in mind
Rankings for Toronto IB (based on exit opportunities, prestige and deal flow):
Tier 1: GS, MS, BAML, Barclays, RBC
Tier 2: CS, BMO, TD, CIBC, Evercore, Greenhill, Lazard
Tier 3: Canaccord, Scotia, National Bank, Raymond James, Citi, UBS
This is very inaccurate, Scotia should be in T1
My son works at Scotia and he says he gets fked everyday
..
My view on Houston Energy Banking rankings (+ Dallas/Denver Energy IB offices associated with the respective firms below), primarily based on deal flow/quality per analyst (by crude estimation using knowledge of recent class sizes, no pun intended)
1: Evercore, Jefferies, TPH, Citi 2: CS, MS, JPM, Barclays, Petrie, Intrepid, Simmons 3. GS (non-NYC), BAML, Moelis, RBC Richardson Barr, WF, BMO 4. HL, UBS, Lazard, Greenhill, RBC Capital Markets, Scotia, Guggenheim 5. SunTrust, Stephens, Raymond James, Parkman Whaling, Keybanc, TD, PJ Solomon, Cantor
Chicago has some massive issues. I'll go down tier by tier. Very low effort post.
T1: MS moved almost all bankers in Chi to NYC. Evercore is almost brand new, maybe T2. T2: BAML Chi is a satellite T3 at best, JPM should be T1, since when does Guggenheim have a CHI IBD? T3: WB should be T2, Jeff has less than 10 IBD in Chicago move down, since when does WF have IBD in Chicago?, RBC also no IBD in Chicago, UBS closed their Chicago IBD years ago T4: BMO CM is better than Lincoln and Piper - move it T3. Everything else in these T4/T5 tier is small/irrelevant/or does not exist.
H-Town
This thread is just an absolute dumpster fire.
Started with the OP - who feels educated enough to post something like even though: 1- he doesn't work in M&A / S&T (asset based lending) 2- literally started his position in January. 28 days ago....
The rest of the comments are just one big circle jerk of outdated / biased information. Even by WSO standards, this thread is worse than most.