London: Secondaries or M&A
If you had offers for both of these advisory careers, which would you take, and why? Please keep specific to London if possible.
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Depends on the group
Could you please elaborate?
It depends which company you are talking about. Some companies will have better PCA than M&A and other way around.
If you're mainly solving for optionality down the line, M&A most likely wins.
But if you have a genuine interest in Secondaries and don't mind specializing early, Secondary Advisory is a phenomenal place to be atm
Especially the teams at EBs are fantastic: Better WLB than the Coverage teams, excellent pay across all levels, and high dealflow in a continuously growing and evolving asset class.
Should the focus on LP vs GP-leds make up a factor in this choice?
Uh yes. You aren't getting rich doing only LP stuff unless you work for Evercore. This sounds like Raymond James (Cebile). If so, you definitely want to be on the M&A team and not secondaries - they're not a legit practice.
Just don't go somewhere sketchy like Cebile/Raymond James
What's sketchy about them
They have no deal flow and their staff in the UK don't know what they're doing
What about other less known names? Are these necessarily of lower quality too? Is it better to go with a brand name?
You're talking about sell side or buy side? For sell side I'd only want to be at Jefferies, Lazard, Evercore, Goldman Sachs.
Buy side you have options.
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What does comp progression look like vs standard IB?
Coming from someone who worked sell side secondaries at an EB mentioned earlier.
My only concern there was exit ops on the buyside remain limited to secondary funds. But otherwise, on the sell side comps at top firms can be higher than M&A with lower hours. My firm is attracting some talent from top BB M&A (their best talent btw).
Pros
1. Growth is way higger than primaries or any other part of the market
2. Shorter path to partnership
3. Wlb
Cons
1. Exit opa
Feel free to message to get a junior's perspective of secondaries in London
You're on anon but could you un-anon or message me pls!
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