Houlihan Lokey Minneapolis office

Any thoughts, experiences, or opinions on Houlihan Lokeys Minneapolis office (restructuring) in term of pay, culture (work hours) and exit opps. Is it easy to exit to major cities after the analyst experience or will I be at a disadvantage to NY and other big cities bankers? How is the city of Minneapolis to live in? How would you compare this to a less prestigious banking group in NY, CHI, SF type cities for IB?

 

I can only speak on living in MN.

Weather: MN weather is crazy. You get all 4 seasons, and when it's peak summer it's amazing. But the temp can range in a year from -30F to 95F. Winter's are harsh, if you're not from a northern state it will be a shock.

Social Scene: There is a good social scene with some cool places to live with lots of young professionals (Uptown, North Loop, and Downtown areas of Minneapolis), and there are also lots of nice suburbs around with houses and apartments to be rented. Overall, Minnesotans are very nice/polite and Midwesterny if that makes sense. For activities you can do a full range of things with the seasons, you just obviously re restricted to doing certain things by seasons. Getting out on the lakes during the summer is a lot of fun, you can go snowmobiling/ice skating in the winters for example. Theres a pretty decent food scene (this is not my area of expertise and I don't do much fine dining), with lots of breweries around for more a low key vibe. MN also has your full slate of professional sports teams to watch as well.

The COL is a lot lower than your NY/SF/CHI as well, but it's not dirt cheap either.

FYI I'm a Minnesotan myself so I am biased, but I do think it's a good place to live and you won't be living in a corn field or bored to tears if you move here.

 
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It's a very good group with high quality deal flow. I've seen plenty of analysts move to HFs and distressed shops from the office, both locally and to Chicago, San Fran, NYC, etc. Hard to compare it to a less prestigious shop in those markets, but the training and name brand will obviously be better than working at a lesser group. The advantage to the others would be networking and relationship-building, which is obviously harder to do from Minneapolis.

City is great if you like the outdoors and like to be active. Known for its lakes and running/hiking/biking trails, it offers plenty of good beer and food. It's not Chicago or NYC obviously when it comes to those, but it is underrated in many respects (as plenty of Tier 2 cities are).

Culturally, it is more similar to Seattle or Denver, but with less homeless clogging up the downtown streets. Weather can be brutal, but May - early November are solid. There are good weather periods before and after, but they are sporadic. If you don't mind the cold, there are tons of people always out running, cross-country skiing, ice skating, playing hockey and generally even walking around in the winter.

If you get HL and live downtown, there is a good chance you can use the skyways and never have to go outside. I've known a few analysts that never even bought winter coats.

 

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