Is Jefferies a bulge bracket given their recent fee share rankings?

I was an intern at Jefferies NY this past summer. After reading about the firm on the board I dyed my hair jet black and slicked it back with a ton of gel. Wore exclusively the two tone collared shirts and sometimes suspenders. I also made aggressive “knife hands” gestures to assert my position as a dominant alpha male. I wore 3” lifts at all times and put two Dr Scholls pads in them to get an extra 1/3rd of an inch. I secured a return offer though they did mention that some of the analysts had questions about my “cultural fit”. I think they were just scared that I would edge them out once I start full time and they were intimidated by my alpha male energy. 
 

Anyway, based on their recent IP they are surging in fee share across multiple key products with top 6 fee share in M&A, equities, levfin, and overall fees, edging out multiple bulge brackets and all EBs.

https://ir.jefferies.com/presentations/presentati…

If that isn’t enough to qualify as a bulge bracket, what would the marker even be? Seems kinda silly if they could end up 4th or something in fee share in a few years and still be gatekept out of the “bulge bracket” title while dumpster fires like DB and CS get to skate by with the title hoping nobody notices them.

The main reason I’m so concerned about this is that when I go out to the clubs and bars in NYC I want to be able to tell girls that I’m a “bulge bracket investment banker”, and I want to put that in my dating profile. It doesn’t sound the same to tell them “I work at a bank that used to be predominantly middle market but is making strides in other products and going up market and…”, you know? 

 

Lol dude no girl gives af about where you work. They don't even know what investment banking is, let alone a bulge bracket. All they care abt is that you're making good money and more importantly have a nice lifestyle (ex. nice apartment). And if they are a finance girl or know so much about banking and the different levels of "prestige", they're prolly not good dating candidates anyway. This is prolly a troll post anyway but just throwing it out there.

 

Get your stroke game up bro. If you're being serious though, you are tying your self worth way too much to the name brand of your bank. Once again, no girl gives a fuck. All they think is investment banking means you're making a lot of money for your age. If you want to bed chicks, try to find some friends and pool together to get a nice crib in a luxury apartment. Living in an impressive building and having a nice apartment will do far more for you getting girls than working at Goldman and living in a shit hole studio. Also, work out if you're not already and get a reasonably decent physique

 

Does Jefferies:

1. Have Capital Markets/IBD Product teams?

2. Have a Corporate Bank?

3. Do financing as well as their advisory?

As far as I know the answer to all of those are "no", so Jefferies is NOT a BB bank.

 

Lol most boutiques also have capital markets product teams, they just don’t underwrite anything and take more of a pure advisory role. Jefferies… does underwrite, and have been well within the mid-bulge range for LevFin and equity over the past couple years. 

I don’t know much about their lending platform but only the American bulges with huge commercial banks (JPM, BOFA, Citi) are really defined by their lending capability, at least in the American market. The Euro banks with big balance sheets domestically are heavily ring-fenced in their ability to lend with them, and GS/MS aren’t getting IB mandates because they’re leading a bunch of revolvers 

 

Excuse my lack of knowledge. What helps gs ms win mandates over BB with balance sheet

 
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GS/MS seniors are definitely as a whole noticeably of higher quality than other BBs from anecdotal observation (at an EB now where most seniors are poached from mid-top BBs and I've interacted with my fair share of seniors throughout my career). To progress to the highest level at GS/MS is more cutthroat than arguably any other bank on the street, and GS/MS is lead advisor on their deals at a far higher rate than any other BB (meaning they are tasked with the brunt of the advisory work, responsibility, and also advisory relationship). There's two types of MD at BBs on the street, advisors and POC (point-of-contacts). Most MDs tend to be POC, where they don't really have a super strong advisory relationship and often they happen to be not the advisor for their client, but rather just their client's point-of-contact at their bank. On the other hand, advisors are the rainmakers who are the "true" advisors, in that their clients are their clients and not the bank's clients. A huge part of the senior hiring process for EBs is to try to distinguish the advisors from the POCs, as the advisors will be the one that brings their best clients over to the EB where the ability to win mandates is purely based on advisory relationships.

Purely anecdotally, I don't think JPM's seniors are on average at the level of GS/MS, perhaps because JPM's advisory business is a bit more reliant on their financing abilities and relationships. Same for BofA, although from my interactions I definitely think the ex-Merrill Lynch seniors are of higher quality than non-ML seniors at BofA for some reason, and are honestly some of the best seniors I've interacted with.

 

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