IBD SA Choice: BarCap/DB/Citi/WF

Hi guys,

Wasn't the strongest candidate, but came out with these offers. Recruiting for my school finished pretty early, so won't be able to leverage to get better offers. DB and WF recruits pretty heavily on campus (could probably guess school), BarCap and Citi not so much. Any advice on choice and best groups? I know a lot of it is group dependent, but at this point in time, which provides me with the best name and exit opp?

Thanks

 

Like you said tough call without knowing about groups. WF is not up to par with the other three, so would probably leave it out. DB, BarCap and Citi are more or less on the same level. You should accept whereever you think you have the best chances of getting placed into your top choice group. You could potentially try to leverage the offers against each other (do it gently though or you risk pissing people off), in order to get HR to set up inperson meetings with your top choice groups (for eg. Nat Res. in BarCap, LevFin/M&A in DB, M&A in Citi.). My personal opinion is that BarCap has the best upward momentum of the 3, and DB the worst, but wtf do I know...

 

I get OP's perspective. If he was the strongest candidate, he would have got something GS/JPM/MS

"I do not think that there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature."
 

I wasn't the strongest candidate in the sense that I was not a 3.8+, zero IBD experience (though still finance), and was not in a business fraternity (important at my school). Also in the sense that I was not even considered for the top BB/EBs. I had to network hard, and prep hard. I am extremely thankful and happy that I have offers, but also realize that again, I'm not the strongest candidate.

Thanks for the input guys. Any more opinions?

 
Best Response

Generally it is very hard to go with which bank if you do not have an indication of group you will end up in and the people you work with. In terms of general prestige and career opportunities (if that is what you are looking for) then you cannot go wrong with any of the three bulge bracket banks. Personally, I would go with Barclays. The firm performed solidly over the last year and was number five in United States and Worldwide M&A, no indications that they are slowing down in terms of attracting top senior talents. DB had a painful recent quarterly performance and will go through years of painful restructuring and Citigroup is in the midst of their own as well. Not to say Barcap under AJ is not going through a downsizing, just much less compared to the other two choices (a few hundreds fired recently compared to megalosses at DB).

Overall, I think Barclays has a very strong franchise in M&A (again if that is what you are looking for) and they house product groups inside coverage group so you get more intense modelling experience. At the end of the day though, it should honestly come from where do you think you would fit best. I know when people say "fit", most students say "whatever" but if you don't like working with those around you, you will fucking hate your life for the foreseeable future.

 

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