Morgan Stanley, Barclays Capital or Citi

I don't know much about Citi; however:

You can't go wrong with Barcap and Morgan Stanley if you are interested in Commodities; they are among the top 3 in Commodities along with Goldman.

Morgan Stanley is more of a star culture than Barcap.

As for the future, who knows; I think it will be interesting to see what Morgan Stanley does moving forward giving impending regulation. I know Barcap is expanding aggressively, aside from the Lehman Brothers purchase, the firm purchase portions of UBS's commodities business.

send a PM to this guy "gordongeico" apparently he'll pay you 1k for every offer you turn down so he can move up on the wait list!

All jokes aside... Barcap

congrats on the 3 offers

MS has a reputation as a star shop. When I interviewed at barclays in fall 2006, they prided themselves on being a smaller shop with more of a team culture, but I'm not sure how relevant that is given the lehman acquisition.

Top banks in fixed income used to be Lehman, Bear and DB. Given that Barclays has acquired Lehman and will presumably be keeping the top talent, I imagine they're the best opportunity; I'd posit you'd be safest there too.

Id go with Morgan Stanley excellent brand and reputation

Thanks! and I appreciate everyone's responses. I think this is how BarCap and MS are stacking against each other -

MS: Star Culture, Better brand and reputation, Uncertain future direction

BarCap: Team culture, Expanding aggressively, Strong in Fixed Income

Given my interest in FI, BarCap seems to be a better choice. Any thoughts on how strong MS is FX? I know Barcap is pretty strong in that.

Not Citi.

Morgan Stanley had the better "brand name" in the past, but that may be irrelevant going forward.

If you are focusing on FX and Commodities go with Barclays--they're pretty much #1 in FX and #3 (bordering on #2) in Commodities. And Barclays, even before the Lehman acquisition, was just as strong across fixed income as Morgan Stanley.

Caveat all this by saying that the great culture that Barclays had a few years ago is disappearing rapidly. Part of that is just inevitable as you grow in size, but much of it is because of the crisis and the Lehman acquisition.

One other thing to note--the culture at Barclays in commodities is absolutely awful. Primarily because about half the people there came directly from Goldman's commodities desk, which also has an awful culture. I once heard an MD on another desk at Goldman call their commodities desk "a shark pit". So consider that before you go into commodities....

Morgan Stanley's culture, on the other hand, is often considered to be not as bad as the other two. Keep that in mind. Also keep in mind that if you are set on commodities and you go with Morgan Stanley you will be working in upstate New York, as that desk is separate from the rest of the bank.

Barclays #1 in FX?

I thought it was UBS, DB or Citi??

Last I checked DB was no.1 in FX. Not sure how it is now.

DB & UBS combined occupy 40% of the market in FX. They are the top two players, not sure which one of the two has a bigger share however......

"barclays, before the lehman acquisition, was just as strong in fixed income as Morgan Stanley"

i dunno if that's true, along with the claim that barclays had the number 1 FX franchise...

Morgan's commodities isn't in upstate NY, it's in Westchester, a 20 minute ride from NYC

Does anyone know who is #1 in Muni, govt and corp bonds? Trading that is.

FX Rankings over the past several years according to Euromoney:

1) DB 2) UBS 3-6) Citi, GS, Barclays, MS

But if I were choosing between those shops for S&T, I would pick Morgan Stanley, with Barclays coming in a close second, strictly because of their growth potential.

MS BarCap Citi ( pretty much underrated )

Team culture at Barcap; star culture at MS and citi

For S n T I'd go for MS rather than Barcap