Acquisition finance from Europe to the US

Hello everyone,

I'm currently working in Europe for a big bank (think DB, BNPP, Barclays, Credit Suisse, etc..) in their Leveraged & Acquisition financing department. To summarize, we are in charge of raising debt for all companies (IG, sub-IG, midcap, HY, large cap) in event-driven contexts (mainly acquisition, but also dividend recap, or any other situation). What we don't do is financing sponsors for pure LBO (managed by another department) and plain vanilla financing (refinancing, RCF for capex, etc.. managed by the coverage directly) or any ST financing (liquidity lines, etc.) that is also done by the Coverage team.

It seems that in the US (looking for NY jobs btw), this activity can either be included in some sort of corporate banking department, separated from IB, or departments within the IB division. My first question is, how do you identify banks that correspond to the first or second category ? For example, how is the split for the largest US banks with large balance sheet ? If I were looking for the job I'm currently doing but in the US, what department should I target ?

Second question, I'm currently working in Europe and applying in the US remotely is not ideal. I was thinking that headhunters could maybe be of any help, what do you think ? Can they ease the process, especially in my situation or they are a loss of time ? I'm a third year analyst by the way (can provide more info by pm)

Thanks for the help !