Average Number of Deals Per Year
I've recently started as an Associate at a Bulge Bracket Bank. 6 months into the job and I (nor anyone in my entire associate class) has closed a deal yet (no financing, no sell side, no buy side, no ipo). It seems like the deal flow here is very slow. My friends over at MS and GS have been on about 3 - 4 deals already. Should I be looking to lateral? Seems like the deal flow here is very slow. What would you all say is normal/average? Should I worry? The longer I stay here without any deal experience the harder it will be for me to lateral. Figure it is acceptable that I have no experience yet however, in 2 years recruiters will look for that experience.
What does the pipeline look like? How active has your group been in pitching future business that could hit in the next 6 months?
Which BB? Which group? Sounds a bit odd tbh
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Student laying it down on an Associate at a Bulge Bracket. I've seen it all.
I share concerns with the OP -- closing deals is a big factor in lateraling. Not just the experience of working on deals as would an internship.
Agree with this - fair or not having closed deals is a strong signal for lateral recruiting. As others have mentioned, given it has only been 6 months it could just be a matter of luck but over a longer time period it starts to show who is getting favorable staffings (e.g. because they are stronger performers).
Having complex deals to talk about is great, but it is kind of like the easy classes/high GPA or hard classes/low GPA discussion that happens on this forum a lot - its great that you challenged yourself but the high GPA is going to look a lot better on the resume (same with having closed deals).
OP, you've been given good advice - position yourself for better staffings starting now. FWIW, my deal experience (in a similar execution group) mirrors what @hominem stated - at any time, 2-3 live (i.e. mandated M&A assignments) and a couple other pitches/business development projects
When I was at MS M&A as an associate, I was staffed on 2-3 "live" deals at any point. I don't think your friends are lying. The deals would all be at varying points in their respective process, so not all of them would be super intense at the same time. Then, on top of that, there would be a bunch of other random things, so I would always have 5-6 staffings going on even if I was spending 80% of my time on one super intense deal. But I was in an execution group. So I am not sure what that looked like for my peers in coverage groups.
First, agreed with the above that the role that you play on these deals is more important than the number. You want to be THE associate from start to finish on a deal that doesn't close more than you want to be staffed as the 6th or 7th member the last two weeks on a deal that does. Being able to eloquently talk about your experience will matter more in lateraling than the number of experiences you can talk about.
Secondly, are your peers in your coverage group on live deals and you are simply getting bad staffings? Is your industry just very quiet right now? Is your bank not well known for your industry? I would try to assess if the issue is simply you not getting exposure or if it's systemic. That should give you more of a feel on whether or not you should lateral. If it's simply that you've gotten the bad staffings, that means that others have impressed the staffer/seniors more, and you need to proactively fix that quickly before it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. I've seen this before, an associate under performs his peers at first, then gets worse staffings, then the gap widens because of an experience gap, and a year or two in is basically useless. Be proactive in getting in front of the staffer demanding (in a political way) some live staffings so you can prove yourself.
Lastly, 6 months without a deal isn't a killer. But a year will be. So it needs to change sooner than later. I'm at an EB where we don't focus on volume and not everyone in my associate class had closed something within 6 months (mind you we only do M&A and my class is small). But everyone had closed something within about 8 months and some of us had closed more than 1 deal.
You have a window here to lobby for yourself or make a move, but that's not indefinite.
Your friends remind me of this
Shoutouts to bankingpledge, wallstreetintern, ebitdad, arbitrageandy, hoeingforyield, notyourfathersbroker, finance_god and liquidity for the daily gold
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