PJT Partners may not have the household name recognition of Goldman Sachs, but aspiring financiers who get their start there often go on to work for blockbuster financial companies, Insider has learned.
A document that PJT recently showed to Wharton students looking for Wall Street internship opportunities revealed 70 jobs the firm's analysts scored after they left PJT between 2012 and 2020. The analysts, who worked in restructuring or special situations at PJT, went on to jobs at high-profile — and often high-paying — hedge funds, private-equity shops and boutique investment banks, the slide shows.
The list includes firms like:
- Apollo Private Equity
- Blackstone Private Equity
- Centerbridge Partners
- Hellman & Friedman
- KKR Special Situations
- McKinsey & Co.
- Oaktree Capital
The subject of "exit opportunities" is the source of much intrigue and even strong feelings of jealousy among junior investment bankers. It refers to the jobs junior bankers land after putting in their dues drawing up spreadsheets and other tedious tasks as analysts, a stint that usually lasts two years.
For firms hoping to tantalize students into applying for their summer internships, teasing past employees' exit opportunities can therefore be a big draw.
The slideshow, a copy of which was obtained by Insider, references seven analysts who joined the nearly $13 billion asset manager Centerbridge Partners, six who went to Blackstone, and four who landed at Apollo Global Management. Two went to investment manager Oaktree Capital, which manages $166 billion in assets, and one went to prestigious global consultant McKinsey & Co.
The slideshow also revealed data on the colleges its analysts attended — a veritable who's-who of Ivy League education in America. Thirty of the 70 analysts — nearly 43% — attended the University of Pennsylvania, followed by 16 who attended Harvard. Four attended New York University, and two each went to Princeton, Duke, and Cornell. Dartmouth, Columbia, and Northwestern also made the list.
The slideshow touts PJT's No. 1 worldwide ranking in announced restructurings, according to data-tracking firm Refinitiv. "PJT has led restructurings in more than 30 countries and across all major industries," the presentation boasts, naming clients including Ford, Xerox, and Barneys New York.
But landing a job offer from PJT can be challenging, according to data tracked by online forum Wall Street Oasis. WSO users ranked PJT in the 91st percentile of dozens of investment banks for "hardest" interviews, making it even more exclusive than notoriously selective firms like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan Chase.
PJT Partners' ties to Blackstone
Publicly-traded PJT Partners was established in its current form in 2015, but its businesses date back several years earlier.
Paul Taubman, a former high-profile Morgan Stanley dealmaker, founded independent investment bank PJT Capital in early 2013. It merged two years later with several business lines spun out of investment behemoth Blackstone — namely those that handled financial and strategic advisory services, restructuring, and reorganization.
The slide detailing analysts' exit opportunities dates back to 2012, prior to the formation of PJT Capital. It's unclear whether the analysts in the 2012 class referenced in the slide worked for Blackstone's advisory or restructuring businesses. A PJT spokesperson declined to comment for this story when asked about the slideshow and where the 2012 analysts worked.
Taubman was previously the co-president of institutional securities at Morgan Stanley. In less than a decade, he's led PJT from startup to one of the most prestigious boutique banks on Wall Street. In a 2021 investor presentation, the bank said it employed approximately 750 staffers globally, had a client list more than 370 names long, and had advised on more than $600 billion worth of announced mergers and acquisitions, with many deals for topshelf clients in industries ranging from telecommunications to financial services.
One such mega-merger was T-Mobile's all-stock acquisition of Sprint in 2018, which valued the target at $59 billion and the combined organization at $146 billion. PJT advised T-Mobile.
Another is advising TD Ameritrade in its $26 billion sale, entirely in stock, to Charles Schwab, resulting in a combined company holding $6 trillion in client assets at the time the deal closed in late 2020.
Last year, the firm generated $992 million in revenue, according to an earnings report released in February. Revenue from the year prior surpassed $1 billion.
Top 'exit opportunities' for PJT analysts
Are you a young person working on Wall Street or planning on working or interning for a financial-services firm? Get in touch with this reporter. Reed Alexander can be reached via email at ralexander@insider.com or SMS/the encrypted app Signal at (561) 247-5758.
