Is Evercore a boutique

Title says it, when people mention boutiques and elite boutiques, I often think of places like Centerview, Moelis and PJT. Places that have a small amount of employees but work on some of the largest deals out there.

Although places like Lazard and Evercore are top places and would be amazing to work at, they seem too large in employees & offices to be considered as an EB, and more as an independent advisory firm like Rothschild (ignoring the fact Rothschilds focus is to do a large volumn of MM deals rather than large deals so can't really be easily compared to places like Lazard/Evercore who focus more on large deals).

What's everyone's thoughts, do you consider places like Evercore and Lazard as elite boutiques or do you think of them as independent advisory firms?

EDIT: pwp is another one that I was curious about, I use to really like them, they had Asset Management, underwriting and s&t?

 

The phrase "boutique" kind of got distorted over the years. Boutique used to mean a firm that was focused primarily in one sector and has a small deal team/number of bankers. Boutiques now often refer to pure advisory shops that don't really underwrite deals or have balance sheets. So, in that respect, yes those firms would be considered "Elite Boutiques".

 

WayneEnterprises agreed.

@California t" I'd consider EVR a "boutique" only because it's primarily an advisory service. As far as internships EVR is nice because the positions are generalist. LAZ is generalist as well and does RX which is cool. PJT is super small number wise but is very well respected on the street, especially in RX.

JC, john cena, jesus christ, etc.
 

Lazard and Evercore bankers will straight up tell you not to call them boutiques and instead call them independent advisory. It's colloquially used that way to refer to the independent advisory shops, but places like Lazard and Evercore have 7x the bankers of the smaller EBs. In reality, it doesn't matter. Just know the difference between their business models and that of other firms so you can talk about it intelligently when talking to members of the firm.

 

Evercore, Lazard, Moelis and Rotschild are often referred to as elite boutiques in order to differentiate them from bulge brackets, but as others said, the term "independent advisory firm" is actually more accurate. Those firms started as small shops (boutiques) but have grown quite a lot and are rather large platforms by now. Firms like Centerview, PWP and Allen can still be considered as real elite boutiques. They are significantly smaller than Evercore & others, not publicly listed and have fewer offices.

 

Still far smaller in size than the bulge brackets and other larger global MM banks, so it is a boutique in that sense. Larger than the typical boutique but I think if you're going to be either one or the other (boutique vs. not boutique), they still fit in the first category.

Not sure how all their employees feel about being referred to as a boutique bank, but do have friends there who have no problem referring to them as such. I'm sure there's someone there who doesn't like the designation.

"Boutique" and "boutique-culture" are terms that do get thrown around too much, though, and I've cringed when students use "boutique" as a synonym for "not bulge bracket" and call places like RBC/Nomura/HSBC/etc. boutiques in interviews/networking sessions.

 
Best Response

I have heard all of four people (I'm talking at the senior level, like MD or founder of the firm) who work at one use the term "independent advisory firm" out loud.

I say this with a smile - anyone who really jumps down your throat to correct you away from using the term 'boutique' is a bit too sensitive about preftige.

Someone made an accurate comment: it isn't correct to lump the Mizuho/RBS type places into the word. Those are simply lower-tier firms who would be bulge bracket if they could.

The idea of a boutique is that they don't have multiple lines of business that reinforce their ability to win mandates. JPM's M&A ranking is inflated thanks to the fact that they're a balance sheet monster that can slap in a couple pages to their advisory pitchbook offering staple financing at 35 or whatever bps cheaper than the client would find in the open market. The client CFO throws them the buy-side M&A mandate to get the cheap capital.

A Lazard or PJT does not do that. They win simply by being a Trusted Advisor, and at the end of the day, a lot of the best guys really pride themselves on that. In the past decade you can literally see the cream rise to the top as guys like Taubman crush it out of a home office for three years between leaving MS and taking the helm at the PJT/BX M&A spinoff, or Bourkeff walking out of UBS to start LionTree, the guys at Robey Warshaw nailing a couple elephants within two years, and however Chris Cole ends up doing with Ardea.

In short: by most people's use of the word, yeah, Evercore is a boutique because it doesn't ever want to be a bulge bracket. Any hardo who corrects you needs to relax a bit, although they're directionally correct when they look for a different term given the scale of the firm's success and how its outgrown the dictionary definition of the word.

I am permanently behind on PMs, it's not personal.
 

I don't think that's the case because the New York location operates independently of TPH, which does underwriting and S&T, even though TPH was acquired. I read their pr statement about the merger and it seems that TPH will still retain it's name and operate the same as it has before, the only difference being that fees are now shared amongst the PWP partner structure. PWP still operates the same as before as well, implying it will still be a small advisory focused boutique with an Asset Management arm.

 

Externally, Evercore can be seen as an elite boutique. But, internally, execs would like to coin as an independent advisory firm and this makes sense because Evercore gives pure financial advisory unlike other BBs which have other business lines and a potential for conflict of interest.

 

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