What's so good about Evercore?
Hey everyone,
I'm a sophomore getting into the full swing of recruiting and I've been browsing WSO a bit to hopefully get some insight into what to expect for this upcoming cycle.
Before joining WSO, I'd only ever heard of the bulge bracket banks and never knew independent advisory banks like Evercore, Centerview, PWP even existed. People on this site seem to herald "elite boutiques" and the whole "I'd take EVR over GS" thing but I'm having trouble getting a grip on why (besides the pay delta).
Can anyone go into a bit further detail about what's so good about Evercore and the rest of the EBs? What actually sets them apart from bigger bulge bracket banks?
Thanks!
I'm joining full time at an EB you mentioned instead of a top BB (GS/MS/JPM) and here are my personal reasons for doing so:
1. Much better compensation, plain and simple. Not only is the pay nearly $50k more for some EBs for first year analysts, but the comp also scales higher as you get promoted.
2. Better culture and the floor felt much less hierarchical. Senior folk do form good relationships with juniors and the smaller class size (~50 analysts per year nationwide) means you're able to get a more personal experience across the board. This also is a huge advantage for my next point:
3. Similar exit opportunities, if not better. Nowadays, the quality of analysts at EBs are highly recognized by headhunters/PE/HF, so if you plan on traditional exit opps, you definitely are not at a disadvantage for recruiting. MDs will vouch for analysts and pull connections to help with exit recruiting.
And, just to answer your original question, Evercore specifically is killing the M&A game above other EBs (except maybe Centerview). Just glancing at league tables, they're pulling in huge deals alongside Goldman, Morgan Stanley, and Citi with less than 2,000 employees globally. If you're interested in M&A, Evercore is 100% the place to be for the pay and experience.
Good luck with recruiting!
Agree with all of the said above. I'd also add that the learning exposure as a junior is better at banks like Evercore. My experience with bankers from Evercore was that they are much more technically equipped and polished than the BB counterparts. One comment I often hear from folks at the independent advisories is that they typically dig much deeper in conducting analysis. Also, many people who are focused on exiting to hedge/ distressed funds prefer these banks over BBs as well due to the experience and the looks they get from headhunters.
The reasons that you've heard of bulge bracket banks are because they're simply larger in number of employees, have longer history (before the emergence of independent banks like Blackstone, - now PJT - Evercore, Moelis & Centerview) and have retail banking presence with thousands of brick & mortar branches, which means you probably have a bank account from one of these banks. Trust me when I say that once you're in the high finance industry, more people respect M&A or Rx experience at Evercore than one at a BB. If you want to make sure that your cabbie knows the bank you work at, sure you go work for a BB. From my experience, all my buddies who chose Evercore over GS (personally never seen MS/JPM as contention) at top undergrads (Harvard, Wharton, Columbia, Georgetown, Chicago, Stern) knew themselves, weren't insecure about brand awareness amongst the entire world, and wanted the better experience.
Evercore gives you solid M&A exposure and $200k as a first year analyst. That's all you need to know
Funny story when my PE firm raised a new fund and asked if any of the wanted to participate, only the associates who came from Evercore made the $200k annual income for 3(?) years cut to qualify as an accredited investor
Maybe it depends on the school, but when I went to W ugrad the top finance kids tended to aim for EB (especially PJT, EVR, MOE LA, HL RX) or buyside, and those firms also recruited earlier (except for the BB women/lgbt/diversity events).
Id echo the reasons the first commenter mentioned, in addition to EBs offering RX experience. BBs also have more uncertainty due to group placement, however the top BB kids usually got the best groups. But yeah, “elite boutique” preference isnt just a WSO thing from my experience, but it likely varies by school, though no one really says that term in real life (in fact, id advise you to never mention that term in an interview)
I've worked at both BB and EB full-time, so I need to correct some of what is being said here.
What's being said about comp and exits is right. Also right on technical focus, although that's more a function of doing M&A than anything else. If youre doing BB M&A, you'll have the same technical excellence...same if your industry group demands technical excellence.
What isn't necessarily right:
Culture. If anyone tries to comment on culture for an entire bank, don't believe what they say. Since time immemorial, culture has depended on the group and the personalities/characteristics of the senior bankers. That's why you need to get to know the people in your group during recruiting.
Hierarchy. This also depends on the group. In both BB and EB, I've seen well-regarded analysts directly address and communicate with clients on their requests with minimal oversight from senior bankers. In both BB and EB, I've also seen average or below average analysts not get this treatment. Being at an EB doesn't mean you'll suddenly be given more responsibility, and if you're well-regarded people will trust you to execute so they don't have to.
League Tables. I don't pay much attention to bank-wide league tables (more attention paid to industry league tables). I will say that EBs in general are doing very well. But what people need to pay attention to are who are the key bankers in the industry, and at which banks do they sit. It's hard to figure that out as an intern though. But in just about every industry group, some star MDs are at EBs, some at BBs. Just follow those people
Placement concerns. I guess...I can't comment.
What's wrong: People respect M&A/Rx from Evercore > BB in high finance...only an intern would say that. I almost cringed when I read that tbh. What really matters is: 1) your experience, 2) who you work with, 3) how polished you are, 4) how detailed oriented you are, and 5) whether you can switch your mindset from thinking big picture vs. details, 6) etc. If you're at a bad group and lack all of the above, being at Evercore won't help.
Side question: is it just me or are undergrads the only ones who actually use the term "high finance"?
This term actually has a long history. If you read any book about finance from the early 20th century they’ll use haute finance (haute is just high in French) to mean basically the finance industry/network of capital allocators. See Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation as an example. IMO it was stupid then and it’s stupid now, but it’s a funny phrase to come across so often.
Eh I think you’re alone here with that pet peeve. I personally like the term because jobs like FP&A, insurance underwriting, wealth management, etc. are very different from IB, HF, S&T, AM, or PE. I know jackshit about the finance world outside of “high finance”, which is why I find the term useful to differentiate what we’re talking about.
One time my coworker (he was associate, I was analyst) told me we work at an elite boutique.
That was when I knew we were not an elite boutique.
You get paid more and work less without damaging your exit opps? Seems like a pretty easy decision vs. most other banks (at least it was for me).
CV, PJT and MoCo pay more than Evercore, by the way (though you might be giving on culture, to varying extents, at each).
I'm at Moelis and we pay $90k base and $80k bonus. My friends at evercore make more than I do and work less hours tbh
As someone that (also?) works at Moelis and has been around for a couple bonus cycles - not sure where your information comes from. 1st years start at $85k base (unless this changed somehow in the last couple months) but bonuses have historically topped out at $100k. I'd say we are comped in-line if not a little better than Evercore kids at the top end, when you include bonuses but Evercore's bonus range is much narrower than ours. Don't have detail on PJT but Centerview has hands down the best comp though, with kids taking home ~$250k 1.5 years out of undergrad.
A lot has changed in the last ~3 years, and not just since WFH began (although that will probably cement / accelerate the deterioration). Ask literally any current analyst in NYC - EVR is trying to be the non-lending GS. Comp is still above street average, but is no longer industry leading relative to other BBs. Spend per head is down on all perks, and a lot of the annual traditions that used to make EVR great are going by the wayside - holiday parties, summer events, nice budgets for campus recruiting, etc. have all gotten paired back over the last couple of years. They hired a pretty remarkable amount of frankly useless ex-bulge bankers, and the experiment has not worked out with the exception of their Consumer group - industrials isn't doing much despite having a bunch of super expensive senior guys, real estate lost half its team when the old guard changed, etc. Long-time groups are now gone or restructured, with the head of P&U getting let go and the head of FinTech (both women btw) leaving for a client, transpo reshuffling, chemicals redoing the middle ranks, telecom bringing in mid/senior level folks with culture that didn't mesh, etc. They removed the truly differentiating element of the analyst program, which allowed you to be a generalist for 4 months before picking a group - now you're just placed in one like a BB, and both intern and FT analyst retention is down because of it. With the COO coming from GS and being the apparent successor to Ralph/Roger, he's brought over a lot of ex-GS practices and individuals, including a guy who used to be the internal talent / development guru from GS. It's just a fundamentally different place than it was 3-5 years ago.
Does this mean it's a bad place to start? Absolutely not, it's still better on average than the BBs on average, and still better than a number of the EBs (i.e. still better culture than Moelis, better chance of getting great deal exposure than PWP, etc.) - but the differentiating factors are ebbing away and others are catching up. There are still really good groups - I work with their info services & telecom teams a good deal, and other folks at my firm work with their consumer & insurance teams, and all are excellent at what they do - but it's no longer guaranteed that you have a good analyst experience there. Exits are still excellent, but as headcount grows that may normalize. If you had the opportunity to go to PJT/CV, certain groups at Laz/PWP, MS M&A, etc. it might be a real head scratcher of a decision these days, whereas I'm not sure that was the case previously.