UBS Debt Capital Markets vs. Houlihan Lokey FAS

I have to decide between these too. Anybody have any opinions with regards to which position is more prestigious, should offer better learning opportunities, set me up better for full time offers...

Not sure exactly what full-time I want. Either banking or trading...

25 Comments
 

1, dcm is not banking, its capital market. Capital market guys always say that they do a half banking and half trading, or hybrid blah blah blah..... its not true. they do like 3% banking.... HL FAS is so much better than ubs dcm if you want to do banking/pe in the future.FAS requires a lot of DD and modeling. moreover, HL FAS is one of the best on the street.

2, UBS is going down. MM is really hot right now....

 
Best Response
accidentalbanker1, dcm is not banking, its capital market. Capital market guys always say that they do a half banking and half trading, or hybrid blah blah blah..... its not true. they do like 3% banking.... HL FAS is so much better than ubs dcm if you want to do banking/pe in the future.FAS requires a lot of DD and modeling. moreover, HL FAS is one of the best on the street.

2, UBS is going down. MM is really hot right now....

I agree on the first point wholeheartedly, but the second point was really only valid several months ago.

Amidst the GFC and loss of the healthcare team, Oswald Grübel seems to have quickly gotten things moved in a positive direction (just as he did at CS). Most MM's won't advise on deals like RBS/Lloyds, NBC/Comcast and Kraft/Cadbury. Although UBS is now more like top 10 in the US instead of top 5, they're def. top 5 globally.

All that said, if I wanted to model and get better quantitative experience, I'd take the FAS offer at HL.

 

assuming associate salary for fas starts at 100k...what would you expect first year lassociate bonus range to be? Clearly not as high has the ibankers but how much lower?

 

fas is basically valuation...fairness opinions solvency opinions etc. I'm just ciruos if anyone knows whether that means despite 100k for a 1st yr associate that the bonus is only like 10-20k or if it's at least 50 or 75ish? The corp fin group is the m&a group.

 

Hey, I have experience in FAS...valuation. I've been doing it for the last year or so and I don't think ops are very good and here is why: HF and PE do their own valuations as part of financial and tax reporting. Therefore, your client base is mainly corporations (which I find interesting), but you wont build up incredible contacts unless you want to work at another val shop. Also, you do a lot of modeling, but it's a volume business, so A) you don't delve deep into a companies financials to scrub them and B) the valuation you are providing is based on what a market participant would pay in an orderly liquidation, therefore it is more based on how the market would value something at a particular given time as opposed to an intrinsic value to the company. The fees charged are low, so it will necessarily be a volume business

 

HL is a huge joke. We are on a transaction advising with them (co advisors) and their team is a complete set of jack offs. Low quality poeple from sub par schools who couldn't get into BB or got laid off because they were bottom tier pussies.

 

Hey sorry, I just wrote FAS so that people understood that I do the val work, but I actually work at a competing firm (or larger firm than HLHZ in the val space). I would be surprised if they were on par with a banking bonus' only because the nature of valuation work is low fee, high volume. I mean, fees as in majority in the 30K - 100K region up to 1.5-2 million (the latter being an incredibly rare event).

 

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