Worst Bank to Work for in 2025?
Which banks are the absolute worst to work for right now? Whether it’s due to toxic culture, brutal hours with below-market comp, or just zero deal flow, I’d love to hear some thoughts.
From what I’ve seen:
B. Riley looks like it’s on the verge of collapse. Their stock is in free fall, lawsuits are piling up, and bankruptcy seems inevitable at this point. If you’re there, how bad is it day to day?
HSBC is gutting its IBD and keeping only DCM and levFin. If you’re in any other group, you're either already gone or on borrowed time. Seems like a terrible place to be for long-term career growth.
- Cantor Fitzgerald somehow manages to have terrible hours and no real deal flow. The culture is brutal, your boss is Sage Kelly, and the guy who was running the place (probably still is tbf) is too busy playing pretend politician while his Nepo’d-up sons take over.
Curious to hear what other banks people think are in a rough spot right now.
UBS… bad culture, bad deal flow, bad hours, bad bonuses
a bit of hyperbole, its still like T15 overall and T10 within certain groups
3 good groups don't make a bank. Yes, top 15 overall but is the most top-heavy bank within the tier. I think UBS deserves a solid shout relative to its overall ranking; a lot of its groups are clearly trash and heavily declining.
Sponsors, LevFin, GIG, FIG at UBS are decent groups. I think there is a mismatch between what people expect for UBS (heavyweight puncher like top BBs (especially after CS merger)) and how they are performing (maybe not on par with other upper level BBs at this moment).
Lazard London
How come out of curiosity
It's buns bro
Horrible recruiting of kids who don't know what revenue is. Yes, there is a video out there of a student admitting this. Poor deal flow, and they act as a satellite office helping the US and French office. Exits? You get lucky to get into Bridgepoint or a MM shop. Brand name is still decent though. Lay-offs in past months haven't been a good sign either.
What video are you talking about?
The only reason brand matters is FOR exits, which you say are shit, so kind of an oxymoron to say the brand is good.
But is this for any specific team, or the entire office?
I mean, it is well known how Lzd London is treated as an adm office for US/ Europe but curious to know if this applies to specific teams
TBF, you could be at the other former 2010s top EB, that’s now turned into a Japanese megabank satellite.
they only hire for their SA through spring intern conversions for which people apply ~2 months after joining uni
clearly gonna have insane variance into quality of interns/analysts based on that
This common knowledge atp. But for some reason Americans will jumped on every London IB thread and say LAzARD iS tHE oNLy rEleVANT eB in lONdon
Horrendous place with shit juniors from an array of semi/non-targets. Some guy there was an Analyst for 4 years (including placement year it's 5 years) lol.
The firm seems to perform better in other geographies (EU) – is this a senior management issue in London?
HSBC is definitely not only keeping DCM..not sure where you are getting that from. LevFin and sector groups will 100% still exist moving forward
Source: I work at one of the sector groups (ignore title)
My bad, I did know they were keeping LevFin, just forgot to mention it. Didn’t realize they were keeping coverage groups too, apologies for the mistake. Also, sorry that you have to work at HSBC. Are they only keeping the coverage groups to support DCM and LevFin?
Friend of mine works there (ignore my title too), the coverage teams they are keeping are the niche verticals which support coverage in the newly 'focused' regions such as MENA, and APAC.
For example, Oil/Utilities with focus on Dubai clients.
Didn’t HSBC just lay off like half their sector teams in the US? From what I read, that was only first round layoffs with another round expected mid year. I’d assume they will consolidate the sector teams into some kind of other group within the bank.
can you shoot me a PM? Have a couple of things to ask
WF M&A / Industrials ran legitimately the worst process I have ever been a part of. So if you are looking to avoid a group / company that has legitimately no idea how to do M&A, avoid them. Note that this is purely anecdotal and based off just one deal (I have heard similar feedback from others on the buy-side though), but the deal was scarring (details below).
The funniest part was they only won the mandate because the seller didn't reach out to any other banks and just happened to use them for commercial banking services, so they thought why not use them for a sell-side process as well. The process was so poorly run that we legitimately worried about the businesses' ability to manage and accurately track their data, and almost didn't submit an offer because we figured a massive ERP overhaul was required, which would have been so costly that it would have ruined the expected returns. Low and behold, it was just WF incompetence, and their inability to summarize and present basic financial data. Junior bankers couldn't label files correctly so forecast files only had historicals. Models never tied. Couldn't even get a sense of segment level gross margins. Forecast was driven primarily off of vibes. Less than 2 weeks to submit IOI, which was at best half baked (didn't have basic things like NWC, CapEx, etc.).
There is so much more I could mention about the WF team but I dont want to risk doxxing myself.
Edit: I do want to be clear that I posted the above for humorous purposes. I do not legitimately know enough to evaluate the quality of WF's Industrial team, but moreso used this as an opportunity to complain about a bank that caused me considerable headache for many months.
Edit II: Called out that it was a mixture of M&A / Industrials, probably more the M&A team than the Industrials that dropped the ball.
This is fucking amazing.
WF industrials is a complete clown show. Maybe the some of the folks they poached from CS are decent, Kirk Meghan is legit but any legacy wells industrials senior banker couldn’t sell coke to Whitney Houston and were promoted/ hired 100% on internal politics so your experience on this sell side tracks.
This is all of Wells. Some of the people poached from real M&A platforms are good but the average internal promote has no clue what they’re doing because they just don’t have the reps and there is a ton of layered on, collective inexperience in M&A.
I second this - heard Kirk sourced big deals such as Thermo Fisher / Solventum and has helped credentialize WF Industrials.
Also other strong hires like Dan Moll and Stephen Plouche hopefully are righting the ship
Appreciate the insight - I can confirm we were working with legacy Industrials WF bankers, so definitely not any of the folks they poached.
Wouldn’t this be wells M&A team? Their coverage teams don’t do the process related things you mentioned
The M&A team at wells holds the pen on most of the dumbassery in the rare instance a client is foolish enough to use wells as an “advisor” but the coverage team contributes meaningfully as well. It’s a true team effort.
Technically it was a blend of their M&A and Industrials team, yes. Regardless, when the two groups put their heads together it was a brain blast of pure incompetence
Heard that group is a dumpster fire. Know people who are actively trying to leave lol
Had a screening interview with colleague development for Industrials and was advising me that I should either reconsider my marriage or my career path if i wanted to work there.
Understand it’s IB but was a shameful display of culture, ran far away.
What’s even more pathetic is that wells industrials revenue is majority JLAs on financings and a few token buy sides. So they’re being super hardo purely to cope and stroke their egos about the endless and completely unnecessary amount of pitching that they do to fill up salesforce to look busy to management not because they’re actually working deals.
This was definitely written by someone who is butthurt WF Industrials is poaching all of their good talent lol.
Agree though, the legacy bankers there are bad. The bank pays surprisingly well, better than most BBs. The lateral senior hires are righting the ship as well.
Truist - don’t come
What makes you say that?
Which group? Bonuses last year for analysts were surprisingly highest on street allegedly.
Which teams?
Also would be curious to hear why, other than lack of M&A exposure
Not many live mandates, endless pitching across many teams. HC will have some co-manager roles on equity offerings. Not a lot of live M&A across coverage groups. You get destroyed hours wise while not being able to get the experience of leading a sell-side process.
BofA deserves a nomination.
- God awful pay the past few years driving high performers out, gutting talent, killing deal flow, and increasing workloads for the remaining competent employees
- Overall feelings of frustration and anxiousness from MDs due to weak deal flow and not hitting quotas
- Finger pointing and resentment across teams
- Ridiculously high MD to VP/AS/AN ratio stretching juniors and making them do more pointless pitches than other banks
-Layoffs across all levels killing morale, most recently 100+ juniors
-Death of a green beret and well respected employee leading to a scathing expose of the culture by WSJ
-BofA more broadly does not give a damn about the investment bank and therefore does not prioritize proper talent management and business execution
Definitely not the worst bank from a quality & deal flow standpoint, but in terms of being on a “sinking ship” and your pay relative to hours worked/stress, you can’t do much worse than BofA.
.
Yes - BofA pays poorly across all levels and geographies. Palo Alto has decent deal flow but they get worked and do not get paid. So build out the resume then gtfo and collect the checks you deserve.
They will do their best to hide this from interns and once you go back FT you’ll see this
Santander deserves a nomination espeically for juniors. Every single junior that went there is extremely disappointed with their experience so far: just all pitching and LevFin work with no M&A at all. The firm and the seniors that left all lied to the juniors talking about being at a growing firm and getting a great junior transactional experience; absolute BS and almost every single ex-CS junior that IK that wants to stay in banking is trying to recruit out but failing due to lack of deal experience + a terrible market rn. Just absolute lies and deceit there. Others ended up at a variety of firms, but from what I have seen and heard out of the ex-CS people, Santander people got duped the hardest.
I agree on all of these points except that I don’t think the senior bankers lied to get juniors to join. Why would they want to swindle anyone? Most of these people have very illustrious 30-year reputations to uphold. They all (probably) have guaranteed bonuses (Santander lowered MD bonuses this year, but they were still higher than other BBs at ~$1mm per MD). I think that the former CS group heads and the MDs from Moelis, MS, Barclays, PWP, Citi, Jefferies, etc. all joined in hopes of building something. There’s still time on the clock: they still can build something, but they have thus far fallen (very) short initial expectations. However, juniors definitely believed that they would have a much different experience when they signed on.
Yeah, that's what everyone says about Santander in London as well.
Kind of silly to expect them to be able to do deals when barely licensed and starting from nothing. People's expectations were way too high.
This may be true for the M&A groups. But I have heard that the Sponsors group in LA is doing just fine. If you are in the sponsors/levfin group I believe you'll enjoy your experience.
LA sponsors is beyond sweaty for no reason, and while it is definitely the strongest group at Santander by miles, the above is still true from what I’ve heard.
Well, what did they expect? I don't think anyone other than senior bankers really joined the firm thinking this is a great firm. Candidly, I would have chose Mizuho or Nomura over Santander...
Any insights on the debt financing teams?
I’m amazed by how often Santander gets mentioned on WSO lol. But on a serious note, it obviously takes time to build out platforms. And if people are complaining about doing all pitching and LevFin work with no M&A at all, like they’re surprised by this… why didn’t they just go to another BB? From what I’ve seen on Dealogic, they’re actually doing pretty well in FSG/LevFin, even if most of it isn’t lead-left. They’ve been staying active and getting some solid reps in. If they can gradually get their name out on the street, who knows — maybe they’ll eventually be able to build out their M&A advisory business, which I think is going to be extremely difficult to achieve in the US. With that said, I just don’t get the idea that people got “duped” lol.
UBS TMT deserves to be a finalist
I was on the team about 5 years ago and it’s night and day from how good the team was when I was there to how it is now
UBS Tech, see just like this whole thread below for rationale:
https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forum/investment-banking/honest-take-on-ubs-ny-tech
Keep in mind this group has bought in M&A deals with a total EV of ~$100MM despite multiple MD hires on guartneed bonuses and being one of the larger teams at the bank in a year where tech was by far the largest sector for M&A. Has to be the worst group relative to overall firm quality.
Rothschild seems sweaty AF w terrible bonuses
heard some pretty bad things about bmo toronto
It’s a sweatshop relative to the rest of the B5 with no incremental brand appeal. Only RBC M&A rivals sweatiness and you can legitimately exit to US PE / any great Canadian shop from there.
where would you put them within B5? I know RBC is the best in Canada but BMO/TD etc. dont get a lot of attention on this forum
Have thought about this a lot in my coverage and most groups at other banks dont seem so great and mine is fairly tolerable in comparison. Worst ones: MS/JP/Jefferies/a few industry boutiques
All index differently on pay, hours, abusiveness from seniors, politics from your peers, etc.
energy cov huh?
Gotta be
Liontree
Can you expand?
Following
Interesting - I used to work there and thought it was great (albeit very sweaty)
Yea was curious as well since I've only heard really good things from my alumni there
Honorable mention-Jeff rx
Could you plz elaborate?
Pls elaborate
Jefferies Houston. Good deal flow tbh but running people into the ground unnecessarily
Moelis (if you're not a boxer)
The dog or the fighter ?
HL London. While the RX team is good - hours and culture are brutal. HL M&A is just mid-market and bloated ever since GCA Altium acquisition and a lot of hiring form Big 4 and lower-ranked accountancy firms such as BDO. This has resulted in a series of layoffs. Exits from HL M&A are quite poor.
Any views on the debt advisory group?
Would vote Liontree for their sh**ty deal flow and horrendous bonuses year after year. Also think list should include banks where juniors had died
Elaborate??
Oppenheimer - Worked in London office, rubbish dealflow when I was there (with the potential exception of Consumer, but even then it's mostly LMM), overbloated from a "talent" perspective and quite toxic tbh
Truist tech
facts
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