Bulge bracket
Fit & BehaviouralA full service bank combining advisory with underwriting, lending and markets, advising on the largest and most cross border transactions.
Also written: bulge bracket bank, full service bank
The bulge bracket firms run advisory alongside equity and debt underwriting, lending and a markets business. In Europe that usually means a London hub with offices across the continent, and a mixture of global product teams and local coverage.
The balance sheet is the structural difference, not the size of the brand. A bank that can commit financing lets a buyer bid with certainty before the debt has been syndicated, and an adviser without capital cannot offer that. It is also the source of the conflict that advisory only firms point to when they pitch against them.
For a junior the trade is genuine on both sides. Training infrastructure is strong, the brand travels internationally, and the transactions are the largest in the market. Against that, on a deal of that size the team is large, so a junior owns one workstream properly rather than seeing the whole process.
Membership of the group is a convention rather than a definition, and the lists people quote differ. What is worth knowing is the model, since that is what determines the work: full service, balance sheet, global footprint, large deals.
Worked example
A cross border acquisition is staffed with local coverage in two countries, an M&A product team, a leveraged finance team arranging the debt, and equity capital markets on the funding.
A first year analyst on that deal may own the comparable companies analysis and the profiles of potential buyers for eight weeks.
On a mid market sale the same eight weeks would cover the model, the information memorandum, the buyer list and the calls.