Can lack of deals in my CV ruin my lateral options?

So basically I joined the M&A group at a second tier bank 6 months ago (RBC, DB, Nomura, WF, HSBC) and ever since I hit the desk, I have only been staffed on Pitchbooks, and internal analysis and presentations.

In 6 months I have only been staffed on 1 deal (a $4bn buy-side engagement that is currently in stand-by and god knows when this project will pick up again if it ever does). Since I joined, I though about the possibility of lateraling to a better bank once I reached my 1 year or 18 months mark, but given the current market conditions and the state of my group pipeline, I am really concerned that by that time I have zero deals on my CV.

I know this would be catastrophic for PE as deal experience is crucial, but could this also affect my options of lateraling to a better bank?

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When I recruited for PE (8 months on the desk) I hadn’t closed any M&A and still haven’t because of market conditions.

The deal closing/being live is irrelevant - you just need to be able to talk about it like it was a live deal and have worked on the model/be able to explain the rationale behind the transaction/business. Like you can literally use pitch work, say they are in-progress on your resume, and then if you get asked about the deal timeline in the interview say that it just kicked off or you just won the bake-off.

So if you’ve done any modeling for those pitches I would just use those and make sure you can talk about the businesses inside and out.

 

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