Houlihan Lokey Internship, any idea?

Hello everybody, This summer I will join the financial restructuring team of HL as a summer intern and it will be my first experience in IB. The people I interviewed with were great! But I heard various stories (good and bad) about the bank in precedent topics here in WSO, I still don't have an idea about what I can expect this summer. Is there anyone that has previously worked in HL that can tell me more about people, culture, working hours exc?

Cheers! TV

12 Comments
 

Have a close friend in the group. You will work plenty hard especially as restructurings are picking up.

Culture is supposedly one of the best on the street and there is no face time but their deal flow requires you to be in the office most of the time anyway.

 

Definitely depends which office you're in here. I know from various guys that work here that LA is much less intense of an environment. Culture is great - exits are great as well (a lot of guys go to Oaktree)

 

Have a friend there. He said that Houlihan's a great shop, and it sounded very fratty from the tidbits he's told me. For example the NYC office likes to run out and grab drinks on Fridays.

For hours he told me that it depends heavily on which group you get into. Some of the firm's flagship groups are getting constantly crushed, on others you will have most of your weekend free.

 

Fairness opinions are completely seperate from their M&A practice.  They close a ton of deals.  If you work in Corp. Fin. you do M&A or financing, if you work in their Financial Advisory Services practice, you'll do fairness opinions and crap.  Interviews are no more technical than any other, just know your shit and you'll be fine.

 

Houlihan organizes its firm into 3 groups; these are Corporate Finance, Financial Advisory Services (FAS), and Financial Restructuring (FRG).  Corporate finance deals exclusively in the middle market, but dominates its market space in M&A advisory.  HLHZ's FRG is argueably the best restructuring group on the street.  This group serves both BB and middle market clients (Enron, Worldcom, etc.). FAS has a variety of services including solvency oppinions, purchase price allocations, and the forementioned fairness oppinions.  What you will see in interviews depends on which group you are interviewing with.

 

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