17 Comments
 

Not necessarily a pitch shop, but they do grind like crazy. 

Generally people are not very smart and there is a lot of mindless, useless process stuff rather than analytics and modeling.

They also work on deals exclusively in the very low end of the MM

IMO stay away unless you have no better options. They do exit well to LMM PE in Chicago and midwest, but expect a rude awakening after having zero real modeling experience at Lincoln.

 

Yeah that was my impression as well when I interviewed there. A senior colleague, who was a lot of years there, had only bad things to say, apparently management stiffed the whole team on boni and put them into their own pockets.

...and the Truth shall set you free
 
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Worked there for over a year and recently jumped to a BB in similar coverage group. 

Lincoln has very few pitches. A lot of deals came from sponsors' relationship and majority of them are sell-side oriented, which means a lot of CIM and teaser writing. That's actually how my interview went that they asked for my college writing sample and a teaser writing within a given period. It is funny that I did not work on one company that was not owned by sponsors, as compared to where I sit now at BB that is largely covering strategics, instead of portfolio companies.  

As far as modeling goes, I actually found my Lincoln gives me solid LBO/DCF hands-on experience because of the nature of sponsors' activity. Analysts there would work on modelings (albeit very standard three tranches with simple terms) and writing a ton. I haven't had a chance to work on an actual modeling during my 4 months time here at BB as the associates would either take care of that, or pushes to the sponsors/M&A group.

A lot of my work at BB now is to work on pitches with mindless benchmarking exercise with other strategics which is quite annoying. And I have not been mandated for any shit since joining in November. I don't know if I made a bad move tbh.   

 

Hey, I worked at another Chicago MM (Baird/Blair/HL) and moved over to a BB but as an associate. My experience has been similar to yours, in that the work is really different and less "in the trenches" unlike MM M&A advisory. It's pretty boring, but I work way less and get to divert work to different product groups that I would otherwise need to do myself at my old MM.

 

Intern in an Asian office, think others have answered your question quite well. So here mainly just to provide another view. The Asian office here the seniors are really nice, chill and efficient, basically a no-grinding culture. Deal flow is great, mostly coordinate with US and EU offices on the whole deal process as most (basically all) M&As here are cross-border. Juniors mostly exited to top EB (say Lazard/Rothschild). Other replies have a fair point on grinding culture about US, compared with EU offices as we work along with. Sometimes our associates got reports or some requests in ET 1 am.

 

You got the idea ;) just didn't wanna reveal that much info. but would love to talk through DM if anyone needs.

 

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