Asset Management Firms vs Bank's Asset Management Arms
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Theres previous threads on this with fleshed out responses from people at both.
I think the biggest difference is culture (don't work for either but am a client of both as a financial intermediary). There's just a difference when you are the big picture vs. a smaller arm of the main shop. Not only in attitude/ management but in actual resources. Although a different part of the financial services industry, I vividly remember our "channel" being merged in to another organization. We thought we were a big deal only to find out we were a drop in the bucket of the total and received resources accordingly. Personally, I like working with / for the firm that is totally focused on my business line. Just better overall alignment. Also AM arm of a bank is always vulnerable to the M&A game. You think they are typically the buyers but some times they just say we don't want to be in that business anymore. Even when they buy, there is some type of distribution channel turf war.
Don't get me wrong, it's all good. Just me personal preference.
Thanks, this is really helpful. The M&A part is pretty worrisome as I enter the corporate world. Somewhat need to strike that healthy balance of liking the work more so than the job/company. The company I'm at is great and all but one of their AM arms was acquired and it got watered down pretty bad in terms of AUM and size.
My uncle is a PM at a big AM firm (Fidelity, Wellington, etc). He always said running a fund at a AM is a way better deal than working in the AM arm of a bank.
If you're a PM at a place like Fidelity, you are basically king of the world. Comp is crazy, you set your own hours, and as long as your numbers are good, life is great. My uncle has friends at bank AM and they make less money (not a ton of data points so not sure if this is true across the board) but he always said that working at a publicly traded bank is going to have worse comp than a partnership/private company. Also lots more oversight and you just aren't as big of a fish within your bank as if you were at a solely AM firm.
Yeah man this makes sense. I'm going to try leveraging what I have now and ultimately try to end up at one of those big AM firms but I will probably need to work on my CFA and figure out a way to rebrand i.e MSF/MBA. The discretionary component seems like a big one too, tons of mandates on banks.
Have heard first-hand that investment bank AM arms are generally not the main focus and have trouble generating true alpha due to regulatory and compliance constraints. For example, if you take a look at GSAM's funds, many of which underperform but continue to be sold to GS's clients simply due to the GS brand name. However at shops like active pure play AM firms like Fidelity/Wellington/PIMCO, the economics are much better as you're a private company with one single goal: to generate alpha. Hope this helps.
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