Sorry, I’m not familiar with the field, so I can’t really answer your questions here. From a search, it sounds like a subset of public finance, but I assume different banks are the top players in the field. I’m not sure it’s necessarily the best pathway into restructuring because corporate vs. sovereign restructuring are quite different, and restructuring groups tend to prefer people with corporate credit backgrounds.

I came across “sovereign advisory” and want to know if you are familiar with the field. There’s very little information available out there. My questions are:

1. How can I break into sovereign advisory in the US at the post-MBA level?
2. Who are the dominant players in this space in the US?

Financial restructuring is my short-to-medium-term career goal post-MBA, while sovereign advisory is an intriguing space that I am targeting for the long term. It would be exciting to work on sovereign (debt) restructuring, such as the Argentine and Sri Lanka sovereign debt defaults or the post-war reconstruction of Ukraine. This field encompasses many elements of corporate restructuring, along with monetary policy, geopolitics, and SOE turnaround.

My research indicates that Lazard, Rothschild, and GSA are dominant sovereign advisory players in Europe, particularly within the Francophone world of the Paris Club, which is exclusive to French speakers. Unfortunately, I don’t speak French. I understand that GS, JPM, and BlackRock have handled these mandates in the US, but it seems that they do not have a designated desk for it.

Let me know your thoughts, thank you.

Kind regards,
Jay

It depends on your goals and where you want to end up (and the specific bank where you received the IB PF offer). You could potentially use either one to move into more of a “real” IB group if that is your goal, but I think you’d probably have an advantage doing so coming from PF within a large bank – just because you’re already at the large bank (assuming you make the move quickly). The Big 4 offer might win if it were not in FDD but in the actual internal investment bank at the firm instead.