BB in Madrid or London

One colleague took a very hard decision recently. He had offers from two BB banks (not GS/MS/JPM) for junior analyst roles.

He finally decided to stay in Madrid because he thought that:

1) Madrid's office is much smaller than London's -> learn faster, less level of expertise, but he'd become more "versatile"
2) He told me that the salary would be quite similar, so the cost of living in London is much higher
3) Less hours in Madrid, which may contribute to a higher quality of life
4) Less stress because there are less junior competitors in the office

I guess that there are also many cons like:

A) Best deals are made in London
B) Faster career progression in London
C) More exit ops after working in London
D) Spain's economy

And many more.

What do you think about his decision? You think he's totally right about his arguments in favor?

Overall, what would you do if you were Spanish?

I think that if I was him, I'd go to London.

 

On his arguments:

Learn faster - disagree, I believe you'd learn more from working in a larger office. The transactions you'll see are more versatile and, depending on whether the group does its own M&A, you'll be given more modeling exposure.

COL and hours - can't disagree there, if you're looking for low COL and few hours London is not the place to be in Europe.

Less stress - probably, but disagree that it's because there are fewer competitors. Don't think it adds to stress that there are other juniors, mostly it'll be much more fun to be around more people.

On your arguments:

Best deals are made in London - definitely, even within Spain the larger deals will most likely be mostly carried out by a team in London.

Faster career progression - disagree, career progression is same across all offices.

Better exit opps - definitely in London, not sure within Spain (probably a tie).

Generally, London will be better for your career and you'll likely be given more interesting work to do. The regional offices are likely more about relationship-building than execution. However, if your goal is to build your savings and hang out with your friends and family back home, the regional office is the obvious choice.

 
Best Response

Probably you can't PM b/c you have less than 10 banana points.

On your questions: I faced a similiar decision and was deciding between Frankfurt and London. I ultimately ended up in London.

1) Money: Yes, salaries are quite similar but London's CoL is crazy. You definitely have more cash in the pocket after paying for rent, partying, eating, etc. when working in Frankfurt or Madrid for that matter. However, (and this overlaps with point 2) since there are more opportunities for growth in London (HFs, PEs, etc) than in Madrid or Frankfurt, I believe this is a very short term thinking.

2) Career opportunities: While Frankfurt and also Madrid have their PE Megafund offices (though much smaller), there are much less post-banking opportunities. The wealth of buyside opportunities in London is totally different from Madrid/Frankfurt, hence if you want to join a L/S HF, a distressed debt fund, or PEs, there are much more opportunities in London. Also, my friends from Frankfurt offices kind of have a hard time switching directly to the buyside in London since lot of positions will be filled with London based bankers and there's no real need to look to Frankfurt, Paris, Madrid, or Milan.

3) Work: I wouldn't count less competition among juniors as a valid point. I am extremely happy to have so many peers around me who go through the same shit day in day out, are down for drinks / going out, and lend you a helping hand when you are swamped with work and don't have time for that comps update at 11PM for a useless pitch. Also, I don't think the learn faster argument is a valid one. As for our firm, most "complex" or "high-profile" deals are done by the London office and usually it is the London team that is working on it together with the MD from the regional office. I also feel like I am pitching less than my peers in Frankfurt but I don't have any significant data points for that. Just a feeling from talking to my friends in the other offices. Hours are probably comparable, it's still banking. Frankfurt is actually worse than London, Madrid might be more laid back.

 

Regarding the arguments: 1) You don't learn faster in a regional office. You end up becoming a junior coverage banker who spends half your time arranging logos on presentations. All the heavy analytical / modelling work gets done in London 2) Bonuses are better in London. Buyside exits are also far superior vs. Madrid or any other regional office. 3) Less hours is pretty true. I had to work with our Madrid office on a few deals when I was in banking and it seemed like they were constantly having 2 hour lunch breaks, even on a live deal. 4) Less stress also probably true because you work on less meaningful stuff. That can be pretty frustrating though.

 

I regret that you had a bad experience with the regional office of Madrid. When I was an intern I hated the 2 hours break for lunch because that meant that I had one hour and a half of free time for doing nothing the days I didn't work out in the gym.

In terms of "working culture" I very much prefer the French schedule that permits you to enjoy the evening because you wake up early and you finish your job early as well. Well that's for a 40-hours/week standard job, I don't know if in investment banking is the same in France.

 
sirog:

I regret that you had a bad experience with the regional office of Madrid. When I was an intern I hated the 2 hours break for lunch because that meant that I had one hour and a half of free time for doing nothing the days I didn't work out in the gym.

In terms of "working culture" I very much prefer the French schedule that permits you to enjoy the evening because you wake up early and you finish your job early as well. Well that's for a 40-hours/week standard job, I don't know if in investment banking is the same in France.

Haha, yea i love the french model too: do no work, can't get fired (if you do, you get shit tone of cash anyway), and if you really don't like your managers you kidnap them.
"After you work on Wall Street it’s a choice, would you rather work at McDonalds or on the sell-side? I would choose McDonalds over the sell-side.” - David Tepper
 

I am based in another European city and I can talk about this forever. First of all, some of you above have stated things that depends by bank to bank. As we can all agree that 1) buy side opp are better in London; 2) cost of living is cheaper in Europe; 3) exposure to larger deal is higher in London, learning experience and quality of life is highly relative.

At my bank, for instance, the modellini exercise is run by the analyst and the analyst may be based in London or on Europe, depending on how the team has been staffed. Also, generally, it is better to be in larger team has you may learn by more people BUT if you are in a very strong junior team (is TMT at my bank) it is very easy that all the good analyst 3 / associates simply get recruited by PEs and you end up working with associates that are worse than you and you learning experience slows a lot. In regional offices, on the other band, you may work 60/70% of you time directly with VPs and ED and this helps you a lot and give you the chance to focus on value add things instead of refreshing comps 40% of your time.

Agree that quality of life is generally better in Europe but depends by deal flow and by which team you are benchmarking against.

All in all, i am happy about my choice as I am not interest in moving to PE within my first 2-3 yrs.

I'm grateful that I have two middle fingers, I only wish I had more.
 

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