Credit Suisse IBD Financial Strategy

Any1 know anything about this group? How it differs from traditional IBD? Exit ops?

I mean I did find the following description:
"The Financial Strategy Group (FSG) is a small team dedicated to differentiate Credit Suisse (CS) by providing value added analytical analysis to investment bankers, product professionals, and clients. FSG focuses on providing an analytical framework (based on theory and practice) to evaluate debt or equity capital raising and M&A transactions. FSG functions as an integral part of the client team from pitch to closing.

FSG’s products and services include: optimal capital structure and debt capacity; liability management (fixed vs. floating interest rate choice, maturity and currency mix of liabilities); dividend policy, and share repurchases; valuation (valuing complex optionalities, cost of capital in emerging markets, conglomerate discounts); applied corporate finance publications; and special projects (new product development, solving “out of the box” corporate finance questions)."

Can anyone put this is in a more straight forward way? Does it mean that it is sort of like a support role for bankers? Focusing on the analytics and stuff? Therefore more quant and less communication focused?

Any input is appreciated. Thanks!

 
Best Response

FSG, as well as the Buyside Insights Group at CS are just attempts at throwbacks to the old-school business model of providing broader based advice to corporate clients in an attempt to angle in more value-add than the next guy. You'll probably look at things from a more granular perspective (for example, you may analyze the WACC more than an analyst in IBD would, who probably just sticks a reasonable number in there and sensitizes it for good measure). A few other banks have similar groups, I know GS has something similar.

The problem with both of these groups are that they are not directly fee-generating. I'd say it's fair to consider them not quite front-office but not middle-office. Usually your analysis will go into a few pages of one section in a pitchbook. If you win a mandate, it's tough to trace whether or not it was directly because of your contribution to the book (to be honest, probably not), and it's hard to tie fee revenue back to the group. As a result, it's very difficult for people within IBD to point to the group and associate a revenue stream to it, and that doesn't translate into a perception of adding alot of value to books...

 

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