Working at a MM or Boutique IB is just as good as an EB or BB.
Im tired of seeing so many students here obsess over prestige, developing this elitist attitude where if you don’t work at (Goldman, MS, Lazard, Citi, JPM..) you “aren’t good enough”. Investment banking is Investment banking regardless of where it may be. Ik a bunch of keyboard warriors are about hound me for this post. But Jesus if you’re able to land an offer that pays a competitive salary and it isn’t a BB or EB thats an achievement. Not everyone attends a target university, most of these non-target students have to work at unpaid IBs and Search Funds to be a competitive applicant for investment banking.
I know you did not just sneak DB in there
I agree with honestly if pay is similar and your not at a "prestigious" shop who cares we are all living the same lifestyle of making good money.
I work at a small "no name" industry specific boutique with about 10 people including the 4 MDS. We work with big PE names and big industry names often, and make similar comp, maybe a slight discount due to smaller deal flow of having a small team but still doing deals from 300m - 2b
is the comp at more senior levels at a smaller firm like yours similar to street as well? not sure if the pay gap keeps increasing the more senior you get.
Not sure haven't gotten that far in my career, with that said from what I've heard yes its less than EB or BB shops but with that said still total comp is over a million and imo I'll the 1m-1.5m year end comp with a better life then slaving away at a BB/EB from 22-30
While all MDs are evaluated on deal fees at the end of the day, the formula is different for true boutiques (30 people) vs. BB/MM banks (and different amongst these categories).
Depending on your deal in the partnership, it is entirely possible for a boutique MD to outearn their counterparts at much bigger institutions. So if your average deal size is $100M and charge 2-3%, you contractually take home your 40-50% share. So, 2 sell-side deals a year translates to $2-3M. Obviously lifestyle is way more chill. Your base salary is likely lower than anyone at big firms though. So you gotta bring in deals to eat, like a real estate broker. But when you do deals, it's clear as day that you are solely responsible for the fees and you get paid accordingly.
If you are a MD at Citi, you may nominally have $50-100M fees to your name from clients that do random revolver/loan deals and occasional passive league table credit from M&A assignments ($5B nominal deal with 75 bps fee with like 10% fee allocation to your bank). But most likely, you don't have a contractual claim to any of it. You get paid a discretionary bonus of what senior management thinks you're worth. Some types of financing deals generate a ton of busywork but are actually negative profit for the bank after capital charges. Your overhead is a lot heavier with like 3-4 people staffed deal teams. It's never clear if clients are doing business with you because of you or because you are their call at Citi. So, there is a lot of qualitative room for interpretation of your franchise value and internal politics go into this. So you may end up with anywhere from $1-5M, depending on your standing at the firm, the firm's stock performance that year, and the perceived quality of your fee generation. Comes with all the trappings of working at a big IB (unnecessary urgency, blown up vacations, random busywork).
EB is in a different league of comp if you're a rainmaker. Your comp is generally a contractual % cut of big leagues fees. So naturally you can hit crazy numbers if you have a big year. Lifestyle varies, but leans more similar to BB culture than not.
I would take Baird over any BB any day, probably any EB either except Jefferies. If you're mad about this I'm sorry you're a risk averse sheep... IYKYK
I’ve heard good stuff about Baird. Why would it be better than most other top places?
Its a good MM firm so MM PE exit ops are an option and if you don't care about exit ops its just a better place to work in with less hours than the BB and EB places. If someone doesn't care about working at a PE mega fund or top tier Hedge fund then BB and EB doesn't matter all that much, just my opinion.
Any insight on how this differs at a new boutique like Consello / Tidal? And how juniors are compensated relative to name BB/EB/MM firms?
I see you've been larping as an MD while posting anonymously. This is definitely a take I would expect from someone who LARPs as an MD while posting anonymously.
There is a substantial discount in the experience, comp, exit opps, skill development and career progression you get at being at regional boutiques. I'm talking about true LMM, $25-$50M sell-side M&A bucket shops. It's not a bad deal at all while you're an Analyst. Do your intro years somewhere that won't work you to death and burn you out, develop a skill set and then move on to something bigger and better. But getting to MD level, developing a client rolodex, learning to work at the pace that real IBanks work at, developing the credentials that clients are going to want to see in a senior banker they do business with, marketing yourself for new positions at the VP+ level, etc. are all really hard if you stay too long.
Congrats on Natixis!
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