Qatalyst vs FT Partners

Very interested in the focus both banks but in their respected industries. I'm sure that because of so, there is more deal flow/less pitch work being done at both banks. Would love to see where you would work if you were to stay in banking long term. Pay at FT Partners is amazing, but it shows that they must have a problem from retaining talent from brutal work culture. Q also has above average pay (higher than Centerview and Evercore from what my friends have told me but less than FT Partners), but how does their work culture stack up against FT Partners?

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Is the greater pay at FT Partners worth the brutal work culture when compared to Q or other EBs? Ran some numbers and found out that you would get roughly 50-70k more from FT Partners compared to EBs for working probably ~2 more hours a day... I know this is hard to believe, I was shocked too.

 

140K base + bonus. Im assuming around $250k all in. Q is around 220k, EV and CVP around 210k.

 

Base was just upped recently to 140k for AN1... source was from a family friend but I think someone else on WSO said this recently too. I'm assuming, after all of the stuff I've been reading here, is that they have a really hard time retaining talent from work culture issues.

 

Even besides industry focuses, Qatalyst and FT Partners are two very different banks. FT Partners's deal flow is much more cap-raise oriented. Their FinTech M&A practice is good, but is definitely not industry-leading and their M&A deal flow skews towards MM-UMM. On the other hand, Qatalyst does almost exclusively sell-side M&A, with the occasional buy-side mandate or random strategic advisory assignment, and they are pretty dominant along with GS in the tech M&A space. Both firms don't do much pitching. For better or worse, Steven brings in almost all of the deal flow at FT Partners, and FT Partners is still very much synonymous with Steve. Qatalyst does a bit more pitching, but I've heard pitching is still very uncommon there.

 

Not even a question, Qatalyst wins in basically every way imaginable. Only if you want to be a fintech purest should you even look at FT over Q, and even then I would rather take Q personally because the overall street rep/exit potential is just that much better if you look at previous analyst cohorts.

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