Best teams for private equity exit ops

aside from the product group M&A, what industry/sector teams are best for exit opps into PE? I've generally heard TMT is the best team aside from M&A, whereas FIG isn't a good team for moving to PE? What other teams are strong/bad for exit opps into PE? Or does it depend on the bank

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Do you mean Restructuring advisory (these aren't product groups) at EBs (EVR/PJT/Moelis)? Restructuring product groups exist at BBs for financing and virtually have no exit opps to PE.

The quote below is taken from a different post and should clear things up:

"Highly Leveraged."

Lots of confusion on the board so as someone currently working in Leveraged Finance, I'll clear it up for you:

Barclays RX (or any bulge bracket RX group for that matter) focuses on DIP financing or any sort of debt issuance for companies in stress. The advisory portion is almost always done by a specialized RX shop such as Lazard/HLHZ/Blackstone.

Basically it works like this: company is in distress and bondholders are threatening to take control over the company. Company hires bankruptcy lawyers and RX bankers (usually Lazard or Blackstone/PJT for debtor side) to advise them on what to do next. RX bankers and lawyers suggest a chapter 11 to buy some time and then formulate a turnaround strategy, but as with any plan, the plan requires financing in order to execute it. The RX bankers call up the big banks' restructuring groups (ex. DB, JPM, or Barclays usually) and say hey we have this turnaround plan but we need $300mm of financing (ex. DIP revolving credit facility) to execute upon it - given the amount and circumstances, what terms can you offer us? The bulge bracket RX groups discuss with their syndicate groups (and this actually gets interesting because the terms are heavily reliant on the circumstance, situation, quality of plan, strategy of creditors yada yada, very diff from a plain vanilla leveraged loan / HY Bond refinancing). Each of the bulge bracket groups submit the terms they're willing to offer for the loan and the company (with the advice of the RX banker/lawyer) will select a bank to offer the lead-left mandate. Even if the other banks don't win the lead-left mandate, a handful of them are usually brought along as joint bookrunners for the syndication so they still get fees. The bank executes the DIP facility, and earns $$$.

6 months later, the turnaround strategy is successful and the company is ready to refinance their DIP facility into a regular credit facility (revolver + term loan). Unsurprisingly, the one who was lead left on the DIP facility gets first dibs and priority to lead the refinancing (and earns $$$ again). The lead-left bulge bracket bank develops a great relationship with the CEO and has priority in offering the full suite of products of the investment bank going forward.

As you can see the role of the BB RX team is the financing side. The advisory side (which is usually what people are referring to when they speak of RX) is done by the RX-specialized shops. With that said, the BB RX teams who are offering the financing still need to have a very good understanding of the situation and the bankruptcy code (just like the real RX bankers) in order to dictate what terms to offer for the financing. The only difference is that they're getting paid for the financing, not their "strategic advice" - the ones getting paid for the "strategic advice" are the RX shops.

Of course it varies from situation by situation but that's generally how it works. Hope this clears up some misunderstandings on this board.

 

UBS LA, CSFB LA, etc.

but all this is irrelevant. If you are starting now as analyst, in 2-3 years PE will have hit it's downturn, as it always does, lots of shops will not be able to raise another fund, and the job market will be flooded with experienced PE folks who've been kicked out. I don't think there will be much analyst placement then into PE.

Timing the cycle is everything...

 

Super ironic looking back on this....

"jajaja" UBS LA, CSFB LA, etc.

but all this is irrelevant. If you are starting now as analyst, in 2-3 years PE will have hit it's downturn, as it always does, lots of shops will not be able to raise another fund, and the job market will be flooded with experienced PE folks who've been kicked out. I don't think there will be much analyst placement then into PE.

Timing the cycle is everything...

 

Heard top firms like KKR recruit at Goldman M&A, etc as well as Gleacher, Evercore. Your chances are probably better - smaller analyst class means less politicking, hopefully more diverse range of skills.

 
Banking34075I guess I'll start it off and we'll go from there. Feel completely free to chime in as well!

Top Tier:

GS TMT MS M&A GS FIG BX Restructuring BX M&A

Next Tier:

JPM M&A JPM Lev. Fin. CS Fin. Sponsors GS Healthcare BAML Lev. Fin./FSG Citi M&A Lazard Restructuring Greenhill Generalist Evercore Generalist Moelis Generalist

Any ideas where the other GS industry groups stack up?

 
Banking34075I guess I'll start it off and we'll go from there. Feel completely free to chime in as well!

Top Tier:

GS TMT MS M&A GS FIG BX Restructuring BX M&A

Next Tier:

JPM M&A JPM Lev. Fin. CS Fin. Sponsors GS Healthcare BAML Lev. Fin./FSG Citi M&A Lazard Restructuring Greenhill Generalist Evercore Generalist Moelis Generalist

This ranking seems fairly accurate, although i've heard that blackstone M&A is not that strong.

Also certain groups place very well at certain funds. Examples include GS TMT with silver lake, GS FIG with carlyle, Citigroup leveraged finance with oaktree, MS M&A with KKR, etc.

 

aren't all of GS's top industry groups outstanding (TMT, FIG, consumer, healthcare, industrials)? what about MS's top groups? how are they not above most of the groups in the tier 2 listed above?

I'm pretty sure all the rankings on here are done by high school/college kids.

in general: blackstone (all), all GS groups, most MS groups, BB M&A/levfin/sponsors

 

I understand that most people think these threads are useless, but if nothing else they are at least interesting to a lot of students. Sure they may be flawed, a waste of time, and geared towards prestige whores, but what is the motivation to tell everyone on here that you don't like this thread? How is that useful at all? Might as well just let people share their opinions regardless of how dumb they may be.

 
in_the_money23I understand that most people think these threads are useless, but if nothing else they are at least interesting to a lot of students. Sure they may be flawed, a waste of time, and geared towards prestige whores, but what is the motivation to tell everyone on here that you don't like this thread? How is that useful at all? Might as well just let people share their opinions regardless of how dumb they may be.

I also agree that these threads are pretty superficial and boneheaded.

However, I can commiserate with kids who are trying to get into PE in the long term and need intermediate goals to aim for. You need to set your sights somewhere--either for general recruitment or for group selection and selldays.

Event Business Academy +44 7508341649 [email protected]
 

Exactly! The point is to at least figure out which groups provide you at least a relatively good chance to break into a MF. I know that many groups are looked at much more favorably when it comes to the recruitment, so it'd be nice to get your views on this issue in terms of what you've heard about certain groups placing very well. It doesn't have to be primarily a ranking issue; just in general which groups do you think provide the best shot to break in.

 

I heard from an Ass 2 at GS that his MD, in TMT, knew someone at KKR who was at MS in FIG who said that they only take BX RTC, JPM Lev Fin/FIG/TMT/MM/FSG, GS IBD/TMT/DCM, MS M&A/LBO/DCF, RBS ECM, UBS TMT/ETF trading, CS FSG and LB CDO. They all went to HPY or Ox Camb for undergrad.

But that's just what I've heard.....

"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
 
PapagogoAfter you guys work in BB IBD for a few years you will realize how stupid this kind of rankings are

...these kinds of rankings are (countable)

or

...this kind of ranking is (non-countable)

Take your pick.

My name is Nicky, but you can call me Dre.
 
aempirei
PapagogoAfter you guys work in BB IBD for a few years you will realize how stupid this kind of rankings are

...these kinds of rankings are (countable)

or

...this kind of ranking is (non-countable)

Take your pick.

Huh? Countability is simply a statement of cardinality. You mean order-able.

 

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Learn Programming, Lectures by Professor Mehran Sahami for the Stanford Computer Science Department http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkMDCCdjyW8
 

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