Weinberg hands over reign of PWP

Was speaking to a friend about this who spent a few years there; here's my takeaway from all this:

1. The PWP stock went down ~7% after the announcement. Its down quite a bit now (some related to general market headwinds) so clearly the market doesn't like this handover. Especially in this market, you wonder if this is a wise decision to make such a change now.

2. I think its widely accepted that the SPAC merger was a failure. The founders cashed out partially, but almost everyone else was caught in the tailwinds of a winding down SPAC market and the fact that the banking model is extremely competitive crushed their stock (its trading at about 58% lower now). There was no need capital injected into the firm, and so you wonder where this takes the firm.

3. There is a lot of pressure to grow for all the EBs - not just the market share but also their own stock performance. I remember listening to Weinberg & Ken Moelis speaking at a conference pre-covid, and they both suggested that there is likely to be merger between boutiques as the market consolidates out in the future. Covid obviously made things weird in that everyone was doing terrifically well, but now with a slower economy pace, you wonder how things will stack up for EBs from an equity perspective. Outside of potentially EVR (and even then their non US presence has never been that strong) and LAZ (which is mostly legacy in Europe), there is no true global boutique, and Moelis, PWP, PJT (all be it somewhat new) and Greenhill (which has declined quite rapidly) and others have just not been able to bring the global franchise. And guess where their own ex-team members are going- to found Ducera, Tidal, etc. etc. The EBs have somewhat become the very problem they were trying to solve.  And this is a problem in their equity story. 

4. Peter Weinberg is a terrific leader. I think the entire culture of PWP (which is only ~16 years old like most other EBs), their growth, their position in the market as a trusted independent adviser came from the ethos that him, Perella, Bednar, Paolo, Becker, et. all set up. When my friend left, the consensus among him/colleagues was that the culture has been slowly eroding. Probably a consequence of expansion, and market pressures.