TMT Europe overview
Hey everyone,
I am a recent grad from a UK target school (think imperial, lse, Oxbridge). I am doing a long-term internship in a tech-focused boutique now. I was wondering how Arma Partners, Qatalyst, Jefferies, GP Bullhound, Financière Cambon, Clipperton, Panmure Gordon, William Blair, Silverpeak, LionTree compare in terms of culture & exit opportunities (for Vc/Growth Equity/PE tech). Which BBs has the best Tech or TMT team in London?
Thanks in advance to anyone willing to give any insight!
Comments (26)
In EMEA, Arma are no.1 for mid market TMT M&A, very high profile transactions with probably the best deal flow across the street. They're also good for large cap, they even win large cap deals over the bulge brackets and EBs. Very strong exit opportunities to growth equity and traditional PE. Good pay too.
William Blair is also very strong for mid market Tech M&A, although they have brutal hours with a tough culture, they normally staff people on multiple projects which results in little sleep and no life outside work. Know a couple people who left due to the hours.
Jefferies is good for overall TMT (ECM and M&A) but they have claw backs on bonuses.
Evercore is decent, similar to a William Blair / Jefferies but no where near as strong as an Arma.
GP bullhound is no.1 for small cap deals (below £100m), great culture and good deal flow. Exit ops are good for VC opportunities, they also have a VC fund which has made strong returns.
Based Analyst 3+ in IB - Ind shilling for Arma in every thread
GP BHL is great for VC, not sure for PE
Thanks you so much for the feedback! Any take on Qatalyst?
Tiny operation in London, I think 5 people total. Handheld by SF team on all deals
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Learn moreWhat's your source on Arma being able to exit to traditional PE? Not sure anyone has done that given they fire people every 3 months
On William Blair, can you please provide some context to the culture? Curious as they are hiring
Source on firing people every 3 months?
Arma analyst spotted lol.
Strong teams in EMEA are GS, MS (tech), JPM, EVR, BoA, EVR (tech). Seems you forgot about LionTree as well.
How about other EBs (Moelis, PWP, GHL, etc)?
Work in the TMT team at a European BB. For tech, Goldman and Morgan Stanley are top with JPM and BoA a bit behind. You'll find the tech landscape in Europe is a bit different and so you'll often see these names doing series D/E financings etc as it's just smaller. This is a big part of how they win good IPOs / be the advisor of choice for M&A and things.
Other bulge brackets do some tech but mostly focus on media/telecoms/legacy tech companies. Of the boutiques, Lazard covers a lot of public/legacy tech companies. Evercore and Arma focus on more middle-market tech but occasionally do large deals, with a lot of work with PE buyers. Just need to keep in mind that European middle market is very different from the US and so you'll often see GS, Evercore, PWP etc. all competing even on 'smaller' deals. Liontree, PWP etc, are all like Evercore and Arma but just to a slightly weaker extent although I'd probably say Arma, PWP and Liontree are all in the same bucket really. GP Bullhound is great for what they do and definitely has good VC exits, people there are super knowledgable and you should read some of the content they put on their website. Qatalyst is a bit different because they only work on selling high-growth businesses to the large tech buyers, and you'll see that there are not many large deals like this in Europe so probably why their team is so small, but if you get offers there I would recommend them over nearly all the other names apart from GS, JP, MS and BofA.
Out of curiosity, how much of the deal flow is related to the series financings as opposed to IPOs or M&A transactions?
Depends where. I would say for the legacy shop like Lazard, Greenhill, etc it's pretty much all M&A. Evercore must be pretty much all M&A too. Arma, on the other hand, is most financings, minority investments and that's why you see they have 'large deals' but it's only for say 15% of a business so ultimately your M&A experience is v. different from selling all of a company to a strategic. I would say for the bulge brackets it a lot of capital markets work, more financings to build relationships but then ultimately IPOs and some M&A. At the top BB's it would just be the odd series E financing for something v hot and then mostly M&A and IPOs I would imagine.
For my bank, it's more debt/capital markets work for media / teleco's over tech. Tech is just very different as a landscape to the other two. You'll see it in the M&A too. We might work on two or three large cap teleco deals in a year but one smaller tech deal that is deemed 'as important', it's just that the tech landscape in Europe is smaller and more competitive across the banks.
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