FTI vs A&M Private Equity Consulting
Title. Just wanted to see what the outlook on the street is for these two groups, because on the face they're pretty similar (FTI advises all 10 of the top 10 PE funds & 63 of the top 100, and I believe A&M is similar too). Some other questions: what exactly do they do, who are their main competitors, exits, why should you choose a career in one over the other, etc. Would appreciate any insights.
Thanks in advance!
Bump, considering the two as well so would appreciate any thoughts
Alix partners and A&M are in a tier of their own, comp is your base salary + 20-50% of your billable depending on if youre billing or not.
FTI is a pyramid pay structure where the seniors take all the cash and work juniors hard. My friend there as a director as well and he made a lower base than I did. He then got to bonus season and they gave him a % of his base…not billable.
Their rates are lower on avg, too. Great experience and less aggressive culture vs A&M. A&M is for type A personalities and they pay that way. It’s a great culture for the right personality type.
I got an offer from one of the top 2 and one from FTI, FTI was way far behind - behind even offers from MM boutiques by a big margin.
Good experience depending on what you work on and with whom, but I’ve hired some guys from FTI and they largely thought the leadership was kind of toxic and keeps all the cashish.
That said, FTI is still a great restructuring job. Just if you’re competitive for AP/AM, there isn’t a reason to go to FTI.
Yes, but as OP was asking, what's the Private Equity groups like, because I've heard that the culture is substantially different from the restructuring groups.
This is in response to the restructuring commentary, and I'll play the devil's advocate, but FTI is the better choice if you're gunning for creditor side experience, as A&M is highly debtor side. Also, based on the data, FTI restructured much more liabilities than either A&M or AP, for FY 24 so higher volume of deal flow. Culture is also miles better at FTI. At the end of the day, I doubt exits significantly differ from FTI vs A&M vs Alix, all 3 have basically fuck all placements into distressed PE / IB for some reason. Makes no sense bc everyone I know in industry says that the jump is easy.
Oh my mistake - yeah I didn’t do PEPI, but it is cool they have success fees in restructuring cons now
And yes. The big dogs don’t do much creditor, but that is more of a WLB thing.
Distressed exit opps are in a weird place right now, I’ve seen a bunch go to cross cap places - but glad I left when I did even tho rx comp is rocketing up right now
Bumpity, does noone have any insights 😭
Edited: They all focus on PE Opps - helping PE portfolio companies. This is slightly different than the main MBB PE-related workstream which is focus on Commercial DD. This is why the first group has main exists to PE Opps (like A&M PEPI) whereas MBB PE groups exit to Investment Teams (but of course exits to Opps are also possible, so you get more optionality).
However, when you are asking about the difference between FTI vs A&M, I believe it's more of the cultural aspect and billing factor you should consider. As someone already pointed out, their salary structures are different (and A&M is better), also people are usually satisfied with work at A&M, search glassdoor, fishbowl, reddit etc. Can't speak much of FTI.
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