Confused About GS Credit Risk Management and Advisory
Sorry to be asking a credit question in the ER forum, but I figured it was close enough.
I go to a non-target that has strong relationships with a couple BB banks, and thus most of us finance kids are funneled into the pipelines for these BB banks by our professors. One of the banks is Goldman Sachs and their largest group that hires from my school is Credit Risk Management & Advisory.
My question is this: Is credit research within GS CRMA actual investment research? Like the bond/debt version of ER? Or is it actually just credit risk and eternal BO hell? I was thinking this could be a great backup for if I can't get an IBD or ER spot elsewhere, but not if it's credit risk only.
I might get MS thrown at me for my confusion, but a couple friends and I have been networking with alumni who are in credit research roles at GS CRMA, and we've all gotten mixed signals about the true nature of the work. Just trying to nail down what it's really all about. Also, this is for the Salt Lake City office, if that helps at all.
Anyone have any insight into this situation?
It's credit risk working closely with the revenue teams. As far as BO goes, it's a good and relatively high paying gig. Someone just moved from there to Leveraged Finance. However, that's extremely unlikely as there were some special circumstances in that case.
More than one people there have moved to Lev Fin recently.
As a matter of fact, the latest analyst class, every single analyst has moved to either Lev Fin, classic banking and the few that didn't get offers from banking groups within GS are banking elsewhere. As a matter of fact, I know someone who got fired from GS Credit and got an associate banking position elsewhere. I won't get in depth on why Lev Fin specifically recruits heavily out of GS Credit, but Ill say it makes a lot of more sense for them to recruit there than from b-schools. But that could be transitory though, I can't tell you if in 2 years the demand will be there.
@OP
As you can tell I have some familiarity with the group. Ill try to clarify your confusion on the team a bit.
Note the "Advisory" portion in the group's name. The group does Ratings Advisory Services (the reason why what is technically a middle office group handles this business aren't quite clear to me, but it makes a lot of sense, since the skillset is very similar),a practice that is housed in banking pretty much anywhere not called Goldman. If you are assigned Advisory assignments (every junior wants them) your hours will be pretty close to banking hours, and dare I say your workload might be even more strenuous, because unlike some banking groups, your 8 - 6 hours are very busy because you still have your risk management duties. On the risk management side, there is limited client interaction (mostly due diligence). Here you mostly serve as a modulating device in order to prevent bankers and traders from running amok. Anything that incurs balance sheet credit risk, there is a group within CRMA that takes care of it. You represent the firm's interests. Bear it mind the firm's number one interest is to make money, thus being commercial is your number one goal. But the firm's number two interest is not losing money, and right behind is not doing anything overtly embarrassing. On the advisory side, there is significant client interaction, and a boatload of relationship building with rating agencies.
/\ This is all the New York group. I am afraid to say the SLC team is entirely different: in terms of responsibilities, hours (9-5), client interaction (i.e.: none) and specially mobility. I'm not going to get into specifics of their duties, but they are almost fundamentally different than the NY group.
Regarding the Credit Research group in GIR, I do not have a lot of insight on it, but sell-side credit research doesn't seem like a particularly attractive role. I'm quite positive most people in CRMA could move to GIR Credit research, but I have not seen that move. If it truly is in SLC, than I cannot imagine the group is that profitable. If thats the case, they must keep the group for some very odd reason.
It's as solidly middle office as you get. No interaction with clients or counterparties, cost center, report up to the chief risk officer. Your job is to analyze counterparties/clients for creditworthiness and apply limits to various measures of the firm's exposures to those counterparties.
Sounds good, thanks guys. As a note to add to the original post, I did some digging of my own and it appears that there is an actual report-publishing credit research team that is part of the Global Investment Research group in SLC. Although the team is small, from what I've heard, this seems a bit more promising for someone who is wanting to do actual investment research.
Any opinions on this group? The person I spoke with about it didn't know much beyond what I mentioned above.
Would the SLC CRMA group have the same opportunities to work on Advisory projects? Do analysts in the SLC office get offers to join other classic banking groups in GS? I can't imagine projects being entirely different, I mean NY and SLC are the same group, so it would make sense to make them work on the same projects. Also, do analysts place well into BSchool from this group?
Here's what I've learned thus far: The New York office is like the FO variant of traditional Credit Risk. So you definitely do work with them, but your exposure to the advising deals is limited. Almost by geography more than anything else. Last I spoke with a couple friends in SLC CRMA, that was going to be changing pretty soon.
Word is a decent number of analysts with Credit Risk got let go from the London office, and those jobs are being piped to SLC. Also, they just hired a few investment banking analysts for a pilot program in SLC who are starting this summer. All of this bodes well for those who are going into a SLC MO position, like Credit or Investment Management, as it's well known that if you're good/valued and network you can move to the other banking groups (IB, ER, S&T). I think you'll see those types of transitions only increase in frequency.
They do pretty well when it comes to Bschool placement. H/S/W has happened but I think top 8 generally is more realistic, with top 15 being very doable.
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