Most Overhyped Investment Banks on WSO 2021
Figured that we should probably have a thread on which are the most overhyped firms on Wall Street Oasis
Figured that we should probably have a thread on which are the most overhyped firms on Wall Street Oasis
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Career Resources
IMO I think PWP is way too overhyped on this website
No hate, just curious why you say that? Had coffee chats with them a couple weeks ago and seemed like a nice shop
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SVB Leerink.
+ SB
how are you getting downvoted? Laughable.
I have been on this site for 2 years and have never heard of this firm 🤣
Ignorance isn't something to be proud of...
Dawg who is overhyping them? They're chill, rapidly growing, and good at what they do. Thats all I see on here.
This aged well.
Aged well
This aged well
Almost all of them. It seems totally lost on people that the job is basically the same anywhere you go with the exception of different color schemes on PPT.
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Holy hell is this wrong. You are out of your mind if you think BB’s, EB’s, MM’s or basically any bank under the sun, isn’t exclusive advisor on a shitload of deals. Sure, your LinkedIn (or other wsj headlining name) IPO’s might have Morgan Stanley as lead left on the IPO, but there are numerous smaller IPO’s managed by other banks. Also, M&A is really what most people think of when they think of investment banking and there are business deals of all difference sizes and sub-verticals that are carved out as specialties by various banks. Having worked across the gamut of deals as well through IB and PE, I can say first hand, your experience on a $200m sell side isn’t going to be that different from a multi billion dollar sell-side. The biggest difference I honestly would say is a BB experience is going to have more red-tape and pitching than an EB or MM. But honestly, the analyst role is pretty identical across most banks due to the first 9 months every analyst just learning how ppt, business, and excel work, and the next year being learning the basics of what goes in a dataroom, how to model, what a cip/cim is etc. It’s such a large complex industry with so many players the hair splitting is lost on college kids or new analysts who just aren’t aware of how complex the world is.
I personally think this is very accurate as long as you don't work at such a bad place that you never get major roles in ANY kinds of deals. Otherwise, the experience doesn't vary by that much a magnitude. The marginal ego boost of your next billion dollar deals is going to fade.
Yeah I’m in coverage and I tend to agree with this as well. Especially at the BB level. I have friends at other banks and we essentially do the exact same things except we use a different color pallet.
I do think at the product level there’s much more variation between banks.
There’s also a big difference between a BB, EB, MM, etc. and staff’s responsibilities
SVB Leerink, Guggenheim, Jefferies
SVB leerink Analyst 1 has downvoted the 10 people on this thread who said they were overrated
Be careful! The SVB propaganda bots will swarm you with downvotes
Deleted
Guggenheim, Jefferies
What I find really funny about this is the commentor above wrote the same banks + SVB and has a ton of MS thrown at them, while you have none… says a lot haha
PWP, PJT M&A and GS TMT SF
Seconding GS TMT SF
Why
What's wrong with PJT M&A
Not OP. Have had experience with the group. PJT name is based on RSSG, and M&A seems to do mostly MM with the few big-name deals within the years (T-Mobile Sprint, Abbvie Alllergan). Lacking in some industry coverage areas -- have never seen them win anything significant in Consumers recently, for example.
Yeah, all the top groups are overrated
Yeah, top groups are overrated
Guggenheim
In order:
SVB
Jeff
Barclays
Gugg
PWP
How many times have you heard “____ is rising and deserves more respect”
bring on the monkey shit, I’ll be brave and stir the pot but at least have the balls to talk some shit back
As a Barclays guy, the only thing I hear about Barclays on this forum is people shitting on it. wtf are you on about.
atleast barc is still being mentioned. UBS/DB are hardly worth comparison.
Qatalyst, centerview, MS Menlo, GS TMT
Are all overrated af. There is a crazy hype train on this website behind certain groups that really aren’t that different from other groups. At the end of the day, your role as an analyst will be pretty similar at a variety of shops and while some brands might be better than others, I’d argue it gets more marginal the more years that go by. Also, there is enormous variance in experience at the same bank with none being unequivocally better for people—I have a friend who I know for certain did more, and larger, transactions at a middle market than another friend did at Qatalyst. It’s not that the above groups aren’t exceptional, they are all great, it’s that they likely will lead to near identical outcomes 6 years down the line as someone who went to Barclays or Jefferies or UBS or whatever. Further, banking is a service that is so in demand in various different industries, sizes, and verticals, to think only one player has a monopoly across a whole sector and that all the MD’s are better at one bank than another bank is just incredibly naive. World class MD’s are optimizing for themselves and the economics are certainly not to all join the same bank—the world doesn’t work like that. In fact, I’d argue the best MD’s usually move to smaller institutions or start their own banks and create the next moelis or move to a smaller bank to build on to a growing franchise. Finally, on an individual level, so many people choose alternate paths than megafunds after doing banking for strategic or personal reasons that the brand really begins to matter less the more years that pass. I have numerous hardcore PE friends that went Top EB/ BB > MM PE or LMM PE for either career trajectory reasons or personal reasons. It’s not like working at a large PE fund is the goal of everyone and those that can’t make it go to smaller funds or Corp dev. I think many of you will be surprised by how few people stay in the industry after 6 years. Heck, most you reading this who are dead set on this career path won’t even recruit after experiencing a banking stint because most people realize the trade off doesn’t make sense for a happy life. They could do it, but people begin asking why?
Edit: keep downvoting interns and analyst 1’s. Genuinely ask yourself what a majority of an analyst class will be doing in 6 years and realize how many different times people will recruit and the whole system will get reshuffled. You are foolish if you think people will give a shit if a 30 year old hire went to ubs versus Goldman as a 22 year old. Careers are long and luck and risk appetite will matter more than the brand of your first role when almost every role in this forum is exceptional in the scheme of things. Stunning how many of you haven’t worked a day in this job, but are confidently stating “the best groups”
Every tech bank is overrated?
I think you’re off base to suggest that a UBS and Jefferies analysts will have identical outcomes 6 years down the line. The reality is that the median exit is much better at the top tier banks (as is the “pedigree” of their median analyst).
I think what you may be referring to is that the top Jefferies exits/career progression may be on par with the below average / average exits from a top tier tech group like GS MS Q. Sure, this definitely happens. But the ceiling and the floor are both higher from the top tier banks.
it’s not as drastically different as the prestige heads suggest, but you’re foolish to suggest that outcomes are mostly the same.
edit: it’s entirely objective that GS/MS will exit better on median than Jeff/UBS/etc… objective. How is it not? So I’m not sure why there’s MS on this
I’ll raise that too and say tech and group verticals broadly are overrated. As an analyst, a majority of what you learn isn’t industry specific it’s why the job/ skill set is so in-demand. A great industrial analyst and a great tech analyst have a 98% overlap. I honestly think I could write 4 pages and summarize the industry specific info of having been in a tech group compared to someone that was at the same bank and operated in a different group.
Since you edited, replying to the median exit thing—6 years down the line people will have families, people will have taken a variety of career risk etc. I think people on this thread under-estimate how many people do banking and/or PE and leave the industry completely or that the best banking exit is undeniably starting your own enterprise (whether a fund or other business). Also the economics are unique and different farther down your career—how do you compare a person who has bigger carry % in Denver, but ultimately making 500k, to someone in NY making 600k and is less instrumental to the fund they work for?
500k goes farther in Denver, but 600k in NY is more and they work for a brand name. Point I’m trying to make is that there is a great deal of hair splitting, which clearly isn’t what undergrads who worked their ass off for an internship somewhere want to hear. They want to hear that their firm has undeniably set themselves up, but sadly the working world is just a continuous amount of effort from now till you die.
I came from one of these tech groups being mentioned (GS/MS/Q). Honestly, the candid reality is that our candidates are more likely to get good buy side jobs, period. Every year the majority of our analyst classes would go to MF/UMM PE, growth, top hedge funds and VCs (that literally only recruit from a small handful of top groups across the street), etc.. of course others don't fare as well or self-select out, but most polished analysts end up placing near the top.
By no means is everyone guaranteed offers during on-cycle, but you can get any interview you want, you always get the benefit of the doubt in interviews given the quality of your group, and as I mentioned there quite literally are exits exclusively available to your group and a few others. Of course there's a bit of correlation =/= causation going on because most people in these groups come from targets with solid GPAs, test scores, etc. so it's not just the group name driving these exits.
Obviously other banks exit to MF/UMM and HF/VC but per capita placement to top tier buy side gigs is just much lower the further you go down the league tables.
I would argue to gap is less meaningful for GS/MS/JP vs a top group at BofA/Citi/Barcap/CS, but it's a very meaningful gap relative to UBS and Jeff that were mentioned here. The reality is more kids in these groups are getting MF offers than Jeff/UBS people are getting MF interviews.
If you're not shooting for top exits it doesn't really matter A vs B vs C, sure, but I wouldn't misinform people that the "expected value" of an exit is the same at GS/MS vs Jeff/UBS because that's just fiction.
I think this may be more a function of the number of jobs competing for tech IB talent than anything else. In NY, the classic path is IB -> PE/HF or maybe growth. In SF, you have VC, PE, GE, HF and Corp Dev/other roles at really interesting companies all competing for IB talent. The result of this is that SF PE exits are a little less competitive than in NY. A lot of analysts from the groups you mentioned go to top late-stage VCs like IVP, NEA, Sequoia which are much harder to land from outside of these top groups.
Also you "have a friend who I know for certain did more and larger transactions at a middle market than a friend at Qatalyst"
No shot. Spend a few minutes on Qatalyst's web page. The place churns out $1bn+ deals weekly with like 15 analysts; you can shit on Qatalyst for a lot of things but deal flow is not one of them
“know for certain did more and larger transactions at a middle market than a friend at Qatalyst“
Ok Bro
Have you ever even worked in banking? I have friends that completed like 2 deals during their stint since their transactions seemed to sadly always go sideways or they needed to remarket numerous times due to a stubborn ownership who wouldn't sell unless a bogey was hit. I genuinely think this fact could only surprise someone who hasn’t done the role or who just started one.
I come on here to help prospects and new analysts demystify atrocious dogma on this website and you get arrogant kids like you acting like they somehow understand an incredibly complex field with various degrees of competitive differentiation and business models because they did a summer internship. Do you even know how long a sell-side M&A process typically takes? That might help explain why this statement is true.
Pisses me off when I get comments like this and monkey shit for being maybe the only person on this thread that has done 2 years of banking experience. I’m out, happy holidays.
You're a retard, end of story
GS TMT is one of the strongest groups on the street
You were asking for hireview questions a year ago. Pretty confident you have no idea what an investment banker even does. It’s not that the groups aren’t great—they are. It’s that it’s totally lost on you guys how much of a hair splitting distinction it will be in the long run. You guys have no idea how similar the analyst role is across these shops. As the poster said, you won’t be able to tell the difference between the deal you’d do at GS and the deal you’d do at Barclays or even a middle market likely. They might be larger at gs, but hell that’s not even true because they do a ton of mm deals. The point is larger deals might matter for the MD’s, but for the analysts it’s not that different.
Qatalyst is the best tech M&A shop by a mile.
You also commented following on a 2022 full-time investment banking thread. You haven’t worked a day in this industry. Can confidently say you don’t have a clue what makes a good investment bank and you aren’t even aware of what the job entails.
This is like watching a dad scold his children
Jefferies
Are WSO intern posts considered headlines?
…the entire industry.
Any money center bank. They will all become the dmv.
This is painfully true.
What is a money center bank?
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Greenhill is pretty much exclusively shitted on...
OP is saying it should be shit on more
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Overrated: EVR, PWP, GS, MS, JEF, M&CO
Way underrated: PJT, CVP (both solely are tier 1 IBDs), Rothschild, LAZ, Greenhill
I’m with you 100% on PJT and Centerview being absolutely top tier, but kids are here go nuts over both (especially PJT), so not sure how underrated you’d call them.
Torch Partners
Jefferies seems overhyped but they def have momentum on their side.
LionTree
Disagree, they're killing it. Arguably the premier TMT merchant bank in NYC, more so than Raine.
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Tobin & Co., some say it is one of the most respected internships in the world
Some say its RENOWNED
The constant threads ranking the banks are overrated. Once you start working full time and aren’t constantly talking about recruiting with your other finance bros, you’ll realize 90% of average people not working in finance will have never heard of your bank (most will only have heard of the large retail banks like Chase, BofA, Citi, WF). People always talk about MF recruiting but most analysts at BB/EB won’t make it to a MF. If you don’t make it to a MF, you’d probably still land the same exit op no matter which bank you worked at.
I wouldn’t even say “making it”, would just say “going for a megafund”. I don’t think Corp dev people “didn’t make it” they deliberately wanted more work life balance so they chose a different role allowing more balance.
Thanks for clarifying. That's what I originally meant in my comment. Most don't want to go to MF anyways because they see it as banking 2.0 with the same hours. Similar to what I said, corp dev is not as competitive and you would probably land a corp dev role from any bank. That's why ranking doesn't matter for most analysts.
JEF by far
Goldman Sachs
Working with GS on deals has been underwhelming so far..
Definitely Goldman Sachs/Morgan Stanley. No question.Great banks, but their 'prestige' is way too overstated in comparison to other top banks.
Oh shut up you salty BofA boy don’t get started again
your comment history is you shit talking GS/MS over several different threads. Give it a rest and focus on yourself
'Focus on yourself', says the guy who has been following me around WSO and commenting on all my posts/threads. GTFO.
@bankinthetank MS is better than BOA, i can give u interview opportunity with them. dont screw up "walk me thru a dcf"
I'm good thx.
guggenheim by far
DB
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Ofc a lot of people would probably renege for them but then end up not bothering with recruiting in the fall once they got their SA offer in the spring. The result is that, just objectively speaking, the top analysts end up going to EBs/banks below GS.
GS is an awesome bank for the platform it provides MDs to bring in business and the recruiting opportunities it offers its junior employees is really a proxy of that rather than average analyst quality.
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Overrated: your bank
Underrated: my bank
this
Echoing Goldman. Some of their sell side models could have been put together in 2 hours and must get torn apart by PE juniors during diligence.
Macquarie and Ardea partners. Both piece of shit and have literally seen them on no significant deals
Overrated: all the banks that didn’t give me an offer
The bank of Deez Nuts definitely has a lot of hype imo
Thanks you for interesting post.
This thread is such a shit show of legitimate advice from professionals and interns and prospects downvoting it lol.
Every bank is overhyped …
The most UNDERhyped shop Houlihan Lokey. Ppl don't realize they are now the largest boutique by market cap and the share price has been compounding at 30% cagr over the last 5 years. They absolutely dominate in Rx and Mid Market PE.
Yeah that’s why they put the E in EB
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