Obviously, there are stigmas about certain prominent industry players, especially in regards to brokerage shops. I get the prestige associated with certain firms, but for those with legitimate experience/knowledge re: working at or with Meridian: could an analyst there get similar (or even better) exposure than an HFF/Eastdil?
NYC is its own animal and I think the distinction of some of these boutique shops within the market is unique. I just can't make up my mind on whether the questionable reputations of certain people/firms is legit.
This forum is filled with many entrepreneurial-thinking young people who seem to excel at understanding the true value of learning. For someone who is pretty certain they eventually want to make the leap to REPE in either an AM or Acquisitions capacity, would a place like Meridian provide legit exit opps (if it were an active/intelligent team)?
Be forewarned that the following reply is not politically correct.
I don't know anyone at Meridian who isn't religious. If you're religious (judging by your name, you might be) then it could be a good place, especially if you want to transition to a New York City family office. But, if you aren't religious, I wouldn't work there.
I'm friends with a few groups that do deals with Meridian and they candidly told me that Meridian recruits young Jewish kids from no-name schools who want to hustle and then puts them through the cold calling program to see who sticks. If you're not of the tribe, I wouldn't expect a fair shake.
Meridian does do a LOT of deals, so you will see a lot of transaction volume. Furthermore, they control relationships with a handful of lenders that put out a lot of money every year. It's an influential shop. For you, it comes down to whether or not you're a good fit for their firm.
Fitting, given your user name
I can attest to knowing one college buddy who isn't Jewish and isn't outwardly christian who has been successful there. He said he was told something like if he works Jewish holidays or the Jewish sabbath he's liable to be fired, but forced downtime isn't the worst thing. He very much has a hustler personality though, so perhaps he's just a good fit, religion aside.
Thanks for both replies. CRE - I think this makes sense. I am Jewish (reformed, not religious whatsoever), but my username is just a Seinfeld reference....c'mon now.
I don't see myself at the type of family office that Non-PC Broker is referring to, but I also do happen to know that the teams I'd be interested in do a lot of deals with sponsors that don't fit that mold at all. Again, I do think there is a stigma and I'm sure there are firms that choose not to work with them given their "culture", but I think the truth is that there are plenty of legit brokers there who, religious or not, know the business and deal with a wide array of lenders and sponsors.
It's still possible to not be very religious/ "officially" Jewish and work at a firm like that. People are people and will respect hard work and high ethics. Just my $0.02
I just spent some time on LinkedIn and, for some reason, all of my connections there are religious but it looks like the company has diversified in the past 2 years. So, at this point, it's probably team-dependent.
The teams I know of are doing deals nationally. Mostly apartment deals in the $10MM - $100MM range, but as you know they do almost everything, including some really solid MM transactions in NYC. For you, it's all about getting into the right team that will put you in front of the network that you ultimately want to work for.
One sponsor I'm friends with told me that Meridian recently crushed HFF and CBRE in a $30MM+ debt placement for him on a Class A apartment deal; it wasn't even close on rate and terms. If you get on the right team you're going to be getting deals done with really competent folks. As mentioned, if I were you, I'd be hyper focused on team and fit with the end goal of moving to the buyside in mind.
Welp. Fuck me then I guess.
I have a lot of respect for meridian as a firm, they do a lot of business and work on big and small deals, local investors and institutional. The knock on Metidian is they hire way too many brokers and while there are some very good brokers, there are some very shitty brokers that are desperate, lazy, lying, incompetent assholes. They should probably be more selective in hiring, but they did like $40bn last year so what do I know...
And yes, HFF and Eastdil do a lot of the big sexy institutional deals, but that world isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. The sr broker gets the lion share of the pie, and the reaminder of the fee is pretty thin whe it’s split at least 5 ways, as it often is on these large deals. Not to mention everyone’s competing on price in that world and you have to cut your fee to very low levels to win the business.
As someone that’s worked in the institutional side and mid market side, I’ll tell you the latter is much better. I’d much rather work with a client that has skin in the game than some w-2 acquisitions guy with no equity at tishman or Hines
Sweet spot in brokerage IMO is the upper middle market space. You can charge middle market or slightly cheaper point fees but deal with legit sponsors and legit capital sources. We were getting like 20-30 bids on the $15-25mm workforce housing properties we brought to market - shit was insane. After structuring in incentive fees we were getting fees in the $350-450K range for selling $20mm apartment complexes.
Not exactly. People have very different business models in the MM space. The vanilla core MM perm space is super compressed on fees. Meridian has done deals for free to keep their dominance and i wouldn't be surprised if their average fee across the 15b they do annually is less then 40bps. On the other hand my shop focuses on more complicated transactions which are usually Higher yield and we average 100bps so sometime we get more then a point. I think fees are all relative and the higher the cost of capital and the more complex the transaction the more you can charge. Getting a stretched senior 50 mil construction loan will usually get you a higher net fee then a $200 million agency deal. But I have friend who runs his boutique where he gets 25-35bps a deal and does a minimum of 750 million a year. He gets very vanilla deals and crushes it. The fact is any team that helps you stay on the broker side and will turn you into a producer is going to make you successful. Everyone on this forum talks about the modeling and being a top analyst but its such a small part of the game. Producing and closing deals at any brokerage job will make you far richer then eclipsing your career as middle management at a REPE shop. Some of these dumb brokers at meridian make more than $5 million a year and went to yeshiva and not Wharton. This shit isnt rocket science and balls and risk are rewarded more then smarts and analysis skills