Cowen Group Reviews

Pros

People are bright and work well together.

Cons

Certain managements' buyouts seemed to expensive to replace and they remained when they should have been booted long ago.

Pros

They have a great work atmosphere. the people are great, and they are willing to help you if any problems occur

Cons

I did not have any downsides working there. Although they did not help me as much as I thought finding a full time position

Pros

Senior management, especially Director of Research definitely cares about the product and is accessible to his entire team. He has a clear vision of what it takes to create a great equity research product and is committed to developing his research team.

Cons

As with any equity research career, even if the firm is great, if your sector is out of favor or in contraction for several years, it will negatively impact your career growth

Pros

Entrepreurial culture
Excellent location - midtown NYC

Cons

Ineffective senior management - lack of strategy
Lack of cooperation between industry groups
Lots of dead wood until 2010 - senior guys with job security from long-time association with senior management
Over-worked (and underpaid) junior staff

Advice to Senior Management

Need to incentivize professionals to work together

Pros

Cowen pays above street for analysts. Lifestyle is reasonable for investment banking. Office is nice and there is access to senior management. Exit opportunities are pretty good, but mostly for middle market shops. Your experience really depends on the group you are in. Clearly some groups have a better work environment than others. Cowen has pretty good resources for a boutique and has a full range of IB, S&T, and research. Good place to start your career. Training is informative and fun. Not as arrogant as other shops. Same benefits as most banks, dinner allowances, taxis, etc. Analyst class is around 16 people.

Cons

Very little name recognition outside of the IB community. The company is over leveraged on equity financing, so they have been struggling as of late. Bonuses are expected to be way down this year. Some groups have bad lifestyles. Differences between NY and SF in terms of how they run the offices. Not much job security lately. There have been some layoffs. While not many people were layed off, relative to the total number of employees, it is significant. Morale is definitely down. Not sure what will happen to the boutique model in the future. Same goes for TWP, etc.

Advice to Senior Management

Senior management needs to boost morale around the office.

Pros

Competitive investment banking compensation vs. other banks

Cons

Typical I-Banking personalities at the firm

Advice to Senior Management

Focus more on revenue opportunities out there

Pros

small teams, lots of exposure to deal flow, very few senior guys with attitudes. fairly laid back for investment banking

Cons

typical downsides of any investment banks - long hours, unpredictable work flow, poor work/life balance

Advice to Senior Management

keep knocking on doors and finding deals

Pros

it's banking. you learn the ropes. many different groups. the training was for 2 weeks. it was boring. lots of accounitng and finance stuff you should alreayd know from your undergrad work. but new for bunch of liberal arts majors that don't know anything about markets or banking. just totally clueless.

Cons

hours suck. management sucks. people are stupid. plus, you get a bunch of losers that couldnt get jobs elsewhere so everyone has as chip on their shoulder. it makes for a crappy work environment. where everyone gives you attitude for no reason and feels the need to make you suffer.

Advice to Senior Management

hire some smarter people.