Considering lateraling midway through A1

Hey ya’ll,

Currently a A1 at a tier 2 BB in the healthcare coverage group and am strongly considering exploring lateral opportunities. I’m fairly familiar with the Tier 1 BB’s for this space and will definitely make an effort to apply. Would appreciate any insight on the Healthcare EB space.

The firm culture where I’m currently at has been fine and no complaints about people or WLB. However, the work is a bit underwhelming compared to what I was envisioning. A lot of deal flow is ECM driven where we’re the second or third bank on the deal (GS and JPM nearly always lead left). M&A has been comparatively quiet with a few sporadic deals in the Healthcare services space that are usually sponsor backed sub 500MM deals. With Centerview running large cap pharma it seems unlikely that this would change and services and medtech isn’t really known to have consistent “large” blockbuster deals. Call me ignorant but I had originally signed on as a summer and later FT thinking I would be working on “deals that make the WSJ front page” as the MDs love to say. I understand that the actual day to day work of an analyst doesn’t vary much between a 200mm sell side and a 20bn sell side. But quite frankly, I had gone into banking with the hope of working on industry shaping transactions and not so much follow-on offerings.

I’m hoping to get some feedback on other peoples perception on the more competitive names in the Healthcare space. For BB’s it seems pretty straightforward: GS, JPM, MS in no particular order. But it gets to be a lot more confusing with the EBs. Outside of Centerview and Evercore, they all seem to have sporadic “big deals”. Heard Moelis’s HC team in NYC has basically fallen apart after their group head left for a CFO position so that really isn’t in consideration. Anyone have a take on the other names in the space like Laz, PJT, Gugg, PWP? Would love to continue to do a mix of financing and M&A but have a greater preference for the latter.