What is the "McK/B/BCG" of asset management?? (e.g. - the unanimously agreed upon top firms)

If one wants to have a successful management consulting career (or eventually wants to become a ceo), chosing a firm is simple...go for the top three...McKinsey, bain, or Boston Consulting group. If one wants to have a successful accounting career, again, chosing a firm is simple...go for the big four...(I've never bothered to look them up).

BUT...

If one wants to have a successful Asset Management career, chosing a firm is not so simple....

So, my question is this - What are the unanimously agreed upon top firms in the field of asset management (e.g. what mck/b/BCG is to management consulting)?? If I had the qualifications to work for anyone in asset management - and wanted to be very successful eventually - what would be the best fims to work for?

Thank you very much in advance for any help!

Best,

Blue

 

B-school adcoms at all the top schools will be very familiar with these firms. My guess is they're regarded just as highly as BB banks, but slightly lower than the top tier PE or consulting shops.

Within finance, it's probably a buy-side / sell-side rivalry, right? All the guys at the top buy-side shops probably turn up their noses at the bankers, and visa versa... but then again I have no clue (just a consultant).

 
kingtut:
JPM - equity & fixed income GSAM Blackrock PIMCO - dominates the fixed income universe
Dreyfus Columbia

JPM, GS, WF, and BAC (they own part of Blackrock) are really the only BB ibanks that have top notch AM arms. The other banks like DB, CS, MS don't have clout.

WF is a bit player and does not have a AM division that is viewed as top notch. Blackrock is NOT BAC's asset management group. They own about 1/3 of BLK and by no means does either party view themselves as part of the other. On the other side of the equation, DB has a very large fixed income AM group and is a significant player with certain institutional investors. They have plenty of clout in the market.

 

Here is the answer to the original question:

Equities: Tier I: Capital Group, Dodge & Cox Tier 2: Fidelity, Wellington, T. Rowe There's lots of other smaller respectable firms, but the OP asked for the 'big 3/big 4'.

Fixed Income: Tier I: PIMCO

As you can see, I've excluded the the firms that provide passively managed fund products (index, ETF's, etc.). Yes, they are big, profitable business, but their employees do not necessarily hold prestigue within the world of active investors.

Prestigue is determined by where the top talent wants to be. The top talent follows the dollars. And the dollars are determined by AUM / number of investment professionals, simplistically speaking.

 

I agree with the equities tier. Analyst at Capital is on par with anywhere due to the money managed by analysts. It’s a unique structure but analysts manage as much as some PMs at other shops. Analysts and even PMs from other shops will jump to Capital if an opportunity opens up. Dodge and cox is also top tier. The issue with places like this is that rarely do positions open up and there is definitely a ceiling if you are at the associate level. It’s usually a post (top 5) MBA plus bulge bracket or regarded buyside before and after MBA type entry. Some MBAs get in with a summer internship but it’s rare and usually only one per year.

The different with Fidelity and T Rowe is that it is fund dependent. Some are extremely respected across the industry (New Horizons at T Rowe) but experiences may vary.

 

Work at T. Rowe. Based on recent performance, don't necessarily disagree, but the only thing I'll say is that the Analyst team is more unified than I believe many tend to characterize it. Many state that the research analysts are each focused on one PM or fund, and while this is true to an extent, much of the time it is not

 
Best Response

AM Is far too broad a career path. It can mean simply allocating portfolios to asset classes, doing fundamental analysis on stocks, quant trading and anything in between. Do you mean HFs? PWM? Stock picking? Manager research? You can’t compare.

There is one massive difference between banking and AM: small is generally better in AM. Shops like T. Rowe Price and Fidelity are so big that there is very little active management going on there – they basically own everything. They may SAY they are active managers but no one can truly manage a trillion dollars actively – those guys are essentially enhanced indexers.

I’m not big on the AM side of banks. I may be biased because they hire smaller boutiques and HFs to manage $$$ for them.

The best place to be is a HF or a boutique asset manager that can basically do whatever it wants with its AUM. I would rather work for Einhorn at Greenlight or Greenblatt at Gotham any day of the week than some big factory that has commercial during college football games.

 

Biased towards more boutique type names for equities but generally:

Equities - Harris associates, duff and Phelps, Royce and associates, hotchkis and Wiley, artisan, Ruane cuniff and goldfarb. Also, the big AMs have some top talent but not sure how much this has shifted over the years: Fidelity, Wellington, etc.

Fixed income: pimco, TCW, doubleline, neuberger berman, and others. Obviously if you want to do distressed/cuspier debt investing then you’d want to look at either the top distressed firms and also some CLO managers. All those names are on the forum in other places

 

Surprised no one has mentioned PGIM - $1.5 Trillion manager. Recently joined the AM industry so interested in learning more about the above firms and what they are known/good at.

 

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