Wells Fargo Investment Banking in 2025? (Culture, exit opps, etc.)

How has Wells Fargo been performing with all the new MD hires over the past year? It seems like they’ve been actively hiring for a lot of junior (analyst and associate) positions as well. 

How are their Healthcare, TMT, and Industrials groups doing? What are the hours and culture like in those groups? Exit opps? What kind of deals do they typically work on?

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One of my college buddies worked in the NY TMT group. He liked it overall. Pay in-line with street and he exited to a solid MM firm focused on software.

An added benefit of a firm like WF is the ability to use their BS to close deals. That’s about all I know.

 

Wells seems to be investing heavily in its Investment Bank, lots of new senior hires (MS, Barclays, and CS), with a shift towards more M&A deals. Management has undergone significant turnover in the past 3 years. REGAL appears to be their strongest group. 

Haven't heard much about the Healthcare or TMT group but would be good to get insight on culture. exit opps, etc. in those if anyone knows.

 
Controversial

Too much Wells boosting above. Wells has been "focused on building its investment bank" and "poaching seniors from top places" since like 2010 and it hasn't amounted to much. Wells does very little M&A relative to fairly sizable class sizes. 90%+ of your time will be spent on pitches that you have no hope of winning and writing credit memos. Practically, the investment bank exists to churn out touchpoint meetings to keep relationships up with large cap clients so they will get an outiszed % of active right bookrunner roles on debt refinancings. Clients will sometimes toss them a bone for smallish asset sales, or sometimes put them on bigger deals BUT in those cases they are virtually always co-advisor. The average VP at an EB or upper bulge has more M&A experience and knowledge than most "home-grown" Wells MDs.

That said, it's not a bad career spot. If you put in effort and stick around you can move your way up to MD even if your personal M&A deal credit is nonexistant. 

 

VP in IB-M&A

Too much Wells boosting above. Wells has been "focused on building its investment bank" and "poaching seniors from top places" since like 2010 and it hasn't amounted to much. Wells does very little M&A relative to fairly sizable class sizes. 90%+ of your time will be spent on pitches that you have no hope of winning and writing credit memos. Practically, the investment bank exists to churn out touchpoint meetings to keep relationships up with large cap clients so they will get an outiszed % of active right bookrunner roles on debt refinancings. Clients will sometimes toss them a bone for smallish asset sales, or sometimes put them on bigger deals BUT in those cases they are virtually always co-advisor. The average VP at an EB or upper bulge has more M&A experience and knowledge than most "home-grown" Wells MDs.

That said, it's not a bad career spot. If you put in effort and stick around you can move your way up to MD even if your personal M&A deal credit is nonexistant. 

This is 100% correct. Wells has been talking about building up their IB since I was an analyst…and that was a very long time ago. Every now and then they hire a few seemingly impressive people from BB firms, but they always seem to fizzle out. There is no reason to think that things are different now. WF has potential, but I’ll believe it when I see it. 

 

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