Had a colleague of mine, who has two years WE in IB at a top-tier BB, make the jump from our BB as a end-of-2nd-year analyst to IB associate at a MM (Piper, Baird, SVB). What would be the rationale for this? Is this typical? Is it a $ thing?
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I could think of a few reasons:
-Location a lot of MM will have offices in different locations/smaller cities. Maybe they got an opportunity to go to a home city
-Work type: A lot of MM's do more purely M&A, so he may have been more intrigued in going to that portion of the job.
-Workplace Dynamics: He could have pissed of the wrong people at the BB and jsut feels like his career isn't going to progress
Better worklife balance, you get to a point where an extra ~$20k doesn't really matter and you'd much rather have more of a life
the myth of the better WLB at top MM is a lie
At a top MM, no, but others, yes. Depends how high you wanna go
A ton of MMs (Baird, Blair, etc) pay more than most BBs as well, especially at the ASO level. Baird is at $200k base for ASOs now and Blair has been at $175k for quite some time.
MM’s often pay more, are growing more/ have more upward mobility, and do more M&A deals per person, so they would get better experience. Could also be location or culture pros as well. Lastly, if they are a career banker they might strategically think it will be easier for them to make money in the MM facilitating deals because there are more of them and it is less crowded. Most BB’s are moving downstream now days anyway. Honestly minus brand, I struggle to see why people would choose a BB over a MM.
Source: work at a mm bank where most our laterals are BB or EB individuals.
Honestly the same reason why I find post-MBA bankers going to EB in hopes of being a career banker perplexing. Probably have a better chance at MM banks that pay in between both BB and EB.
Depends the EB, many of them are eerily similar to MM’s in reality with a few MD’s who bring in large deals. That $500m-$2B range is really an overlap between all players at this point.
Are you at a top MM of more regional?
Top MM/ one this forum talks about often. To add clarity—not true for all mm’s / a piece of crap shop obviously doesn’t make sense. But if the people are smart and it just targets the mm, you likely will have more interaction with key decision holders, see more deals, upward mobility etc.
Someone switching out of IB after 2 years to another job? You don't say?
Could be he found a team he liked more, new industry, WLB, $, I can think of 50 different facotrs
A2A means he’s still in IB...
Covering public clients like the BBs do can be a real drag and is generally the source of most fire drills and blown up plans.
I think the opportunity to do mostly M&A, have more predictability in your life (hours will be long still but like a CIM for a private sellside isn't going to cause a firedrill or blow up a weekend generally), and fairly equal pay depending on the bank are all good reasons. Ultimately it comes down to team, if you don't like the people you are working with it will never be manageable at any bank
After working at top BB IBD groups, this really doesn’t surprise me. Maybe he actually enjoyed the advisory aspect of the job, but felt stifled by strict structure at BB. Maybe he didn’t enjoy doing a lot of equity and debt work, which are very process heavy and also entail and inordinate amount of internal committee meetings. He may have been looking for a place that’s a bit more entrepreneurial, less defined structure, more room for quick promotions, greater focus on advisory, better WLB, etc.
I think BBs are a great place to begin your career. They have a well developed analyst program and the structured environment is great for coming up to speed quickly. Long term though, I would never stay at BB. I think it really depends what type of environment you thrive in.
Reality is Dodd Frank and all the financial regulation post 2008 (which I honestly think was necessary but I'm sure many on here would disagree) made BBs far less appealing. I remember reading a FT Times article where Moelis said something along the lines that pre-2008, bulge brackets was the place to be and it didn't make much sense to be at a boutique as a career banker since having a strong set of products available for the client at the time could be very lucrative.
Can you elaborate on the strong training and well developed analyst program at a BB? I've heard it quite a bit on here but not sure what it actually means.
BBs have been bringing in large analyst classes for decades now and have had a lot of time to fine tune the analyst training program. There is a formal 4-6 week training program before hitting the desk. Once in the desk, groups are experienced with bringing analysts classes up to speed and a lot of bankers went through the program as well. The groups understand common difficulties for analysts and skill gaps. A lot of groups will have additional training modules for their analysts to go over how the group approaches modeling, naming conventions, key shortcuts, formatting tips, and other crucial tasks. There are often modules for different products as well and all the key steps that an analyst needs to tackle. Additionally, there is typically a large repository of helpful tips / useful guides / reference materials that prior analysts have compiled. HR also hosts formal training throughout the first few months to go into more detailed modeling, etc.
When you’re inevitable still confused after going through this, there is a large analyst class one year above you that can show you the ropes.
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