Best part-time buy-side internship for leverage finance - please help!

Hello,

I'm currently a junior going to a non-target school in Chicago. I've accepted a summer analyst coverage group position at a MM investment bank here in town (Baird, William Blair, HL) but recent have been interested in working Leveraged Finance in New York.

I know it is incredibly challenging to go from SA to FT at a different bank so I want to build as strong a resume as possible. I have some corporate bond Fixed Income modeling experience from a previous AM internship which involved building 3 statement models of large public companies.

I'm looking at part-time buyside internships for this next semester and wanted your guy's input on which would be most impressive for a New York lev fin application. Here are my options for part-time next semester:

1: lower mm private equity 2: mezzanine debt shop 3: private equity fund of funds (very few coinvestments) 4: fixed income HF (mostly as a trading / ops intern)

Would you guys please rank these 4 as far as which you think would be most impressive for lev fin given that I already have Fixed Income AM experience and will have MM IB experience next Summer?

Thanks for all your help!

GgLp

6 Comments
 

As someone who is "interested in working in leveraged finance" the answer should be pretty clear. Lower MM private equity (Theres a reason its called a LBO) or mezzanine debt shop (leveraged debt) are the obvious choices. Now you mention you're looking at part-time internships yet asking others to rank them seems to indicate you already got the offers? I would recommend focusing on actually landing the offer before deciding which is "most impressive"

 

I have no familiarity with the part time off-cycle recruitment process, but the PE or Mezz would probably be much more valuable experience than the Fund of funds - how long do you have to accept there offer/could you accelerate the other two timelines to get a decision before the FoF offer expires? If not, I really can't tell you what to do - really depends on how likely you think it is you would get the PE or Mezz offers

 

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