PWP v. DB v. Rothschild (NY)

Choosing from: PWP, DB, and Rothschild

I am from a semi-target trying and was lucky enough to get 3 SA offers, all NYC

Which would you pick in terms of deal experience, prestige, exit opps?

 

You realize that PWP is not going to let you exit into PE right? They expect a long term commitment. They are arguably the most prestigious of the three and you will get great deal experience, but they will fend off headhunters so that analysts do not have access to exit opps

 
Best Response

All 3 are great firms, congrats on the offers.

PE Exits: I would actually say DB on this one, if you can get into LevFin, Sponsors or Industrials, you shouldn't have a hard time getting into PE (probably not megafund though although they do send 1-2 every year). Neither PWP nor Rothschild has outstanding placement when it comes to the top PE shops but I'm sure that both firms will get you into PE if that's ultimately what you want. One of the above posters said that PWP is really into keeping people. Although this is true, they are also very much about taking care of their analysts. They send an obscene percentage of their analysts to HBS (Pete is on the board and Joe personally writes recs), so you may want to consider this as well when thinking about exits.

Prestige: Since I don't want to start another ranking flame war, I will put it this way: PWP is by far the most selective, DB is probably the least selective. This is NOT to say that PWP is necessarily > DB, but rather that it is just much harder to get into PWP (they had 3 summers last year and their analyst class will be 6 I think). I think PWP is generally looking for the same people as GS/MS which means that A) most of the offers they give out aren't accepted, and B) most people who are there are very impressive. Rothschild is somewhere in between, but in NY they are not regarded as highly as they are in Europe. However, obviously, their RX practice is much better than their M&A practice.

Culture: Both PWP and Rothschild have tight knit cultures (PWP much more so). At PWP the culture is definitely much more familial, whereas at Rothschild, the impression I got was that it was somewhat guy-ish/fratty. At DB it will depend from group to group and from team to team. DB hired a lot of teams from ML and LB during the crisis so a lot of groups don't even have standardized formats (some use word, others use ppt). For the above mentioned groups however (LF, FSG, INDU), they are all very laid-back cultures.

Hope this is helpful

 
wshopeful:
I would also take Rothschild for the aforementioned reasons. Unless if its lev fin for DB (which is very competitive, so you can't bank on that), a top boutique like Rothschild will give you better exit ops after your analyst years. It will overall just be a better experience and you'll likely have more exposure.

I almost got dinged when I referred to Rothschild as a boutique during my interview. The Director was like wtf, we are a 200 year old banking group, do not ever refer to us as a boutique!

 
Jadeveon Clowney:
Thank you everyone so far for your input. I definitely really liked the culture and the people I met at Rothschild the best of the three. Does anyone have any info on end of year bonus differences across these three? Would they be very significant? Thanks

Did you notice how the Directors/MDs have been at Rothschild for 10-15 years! I met a lot of people who started their careers at Rothschild and heve been there ever since. I guess that says something about the culture.

 

Yes I totally saw that and a lot of the more junior people I talked to mentioned how its more of an "apprenticeship" culture where they really want you to succeed and be there for the long term. I think that's a big plus. Thanks for the tip on not calling it a boutique going forward.

 

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