"The Pulse" -- #70--RBC Opened SA 2026 / An Interview with Restructuring

Early Bird Sales!

SA 2026 interview szn is here! Don’t fall behind your competition by wasting time tracking applications.

1. Last week to claim our 30% sale for the purchase of our Premium Database! Details of our Premium Database can be found below. Venmo @ThePulsePrep $35 or pay with credit card Premium Database 30% Sale ---Stripe.com and shoot us an e-mail @[email protected]

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Recruiting Timeline:

Banking:

Where We’re At:

• SA 2026: RBC opened its application this week. As previously stated, RBC is always the first bank to fully open its application—others will be soon to follow. There is now 1 bank actively recruiting for the SA 2026 season  

  -You need to be applying early and often. The majority of these applications are rolling and the best way to stand out is to have your resume at the top of stack. Over 70% of our Premium Database users locked in a SA 2025 job. Make your life easier, we will take care of the administrative bullshit for you.

• SA 2025: Leonis Partners opened its applications this week. Since SA 2026 recruiting has kicked off, we will no longer be tracking the SA 2025 process. This recruiting window is completely dead with only a few more really small boutiques and re-openings of old applications remaining in the pipeline. The total bank number for the SA 2025 season was 129. 

• FT 2025: No updates. The FT season is brief, this process is over 85% complete. 52 firms are actively recruiting for FT 2025. Please reach out if you are looking for coaching!

New SA 2026 Applications:

• RBC: Large Canadian bank, apply today! (SA 2026)

New SA 2025 Applications:

• Leonis Partners: Boutique; M&A focus and Private Capital Raises (SA 2025)

New FT 2025 Applications:

• None

See below to gain access to our premium database, updated weekly, which houses the application processes for over 200+ banks/consulting/buyside firms! Gain an edge over everyone else by not having to spend countless hours tracking applications and deadlines.

Consulting:

Where We’re At:

• 45 SA 2025 applications have been released along with 50 FT 2025 apps. Most firms will have hiring wrapped up by mid-November.

*We updated the networking contacts in the premium database so take advantage of that resource.

SA 2025 released apps:

• None

FT 2025 released apps:

• KPMG - Associate Consultant (FT 2025)

• PwC - Associate (FT 2025)

• Triangle Insights Group: Life Sciences Consulting - Strategy Analyst (FT 2025)

Apply ASAP if you’re interested!

Buyside:

Where We’re At:

• SA 2026: No updates this week. If you’re looking for a buyside internship, be sure to understand what asset class and strategy you’re looking to work in.

• SA 2025: Peakspan Capital and DWS opened their SA 2025 apps this week. This brings the total buyside count to ~150 opened applications.

New SA 2026 released apps:

• None

New SA 2025 released apps:

• Peakspan Capital: MM growth equity (SA 2025)

• DWS: Asset management (SA 2025)

The database is updated weekly and contains 200+ Investment Banking and Consulting internships/full-time positions along with:

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This is a small investment for a huge payout when you secure your dream offer!

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Market Update:

Interview with @Restructuring 

Before jumping in, be sure to give @Restructuring a follow on Instagram and show some love to his newsletter @Pari-Passu Newsletter!

We had a great discussion covering the development of his Instagram page, his early interest into restructuring, and a little bit about his perspective on the buyside vs. the sellside. Rx was a fantastic guest, and we hope you enjoy.

1. First, what is your goal with ‘@Restructuring’ and how did you get started with it? Would you ever go full-time? Do you want to stay anon permanently?

First of all, thank you for having me on. Excited to be doing this!

@Restructuring started as an Instagram account talking exclusively about advanced restructuring topics (talk about finding a small market haha). I started the account when I was a restructuring banking analyst.

I used to scroll through Instagram and I realized that while there were countless meme pages, I could not find a single page talking about restructuring that I would stop and spend time reading and studying. Looking back, that made sense given few people work in the field, but I loved the space so I just started posting educational posts for fun. 

After one year, I was very frustrated because I believed that people did not appreciate the amount of work that would go into the posts. A bit childish looking back but that got me to an important realization. People are not on Instagram to learn and changing behavior is difficult. That is why I started the @Pari-Passu Newsletter which has performed much better than I could have ever imagined. 

Regarding the decision to go full-time, I think that I can bring a lot of value thanks to the knowledge I am accumulating with my job, which is why I doubt I will ever go full-time with it for at least 10 years. I see this as the best hobby in the world that allows me to have fun, learn, and help other people understand the finance industry. 

I love being anonymous, I would only reveal my identity if it made sense for the business but that is obviously not possible at the junior level. I see work as a priority over the page and the newsletter, so I believe I will be anonymous for at least a decade.

2. You have to be one of the fastest growing accounts in the fin-meme space. What was your ‘aha!’ moment?

It is funny you say that, I believe I was for my first year the slowest growing account in the fin-meme world.

Creating an audience from scratch was extremely hard which is why writing about what I loved was essential as no one would have ever stuck with it considering the lack of success. To give you some numbers, after 6 months of 3/4x posts per week, I had 500 followers.

Note that these were posts that could take hours to make and would get maybe 10 likes. It was a bit embarrassing but I was enjoying making them so I was totally fine with it. What bothered me was that when I made a meme I would get a ton more likes, which seemed unfair to me. 

The ‘aha!’ moment was realizing I was underappreciated on Instagram and I pivoted focus to sharing my content on the newsletter and on Twitter, where results have been very strong. 

I have actually been tracking my audience figures very precisely so you can see below that the thing that has been really performing well has been the Twitter account. Over there, growth has felt too easy to be true and I can see a direct correlation between quality of posts and results which is why I am spending most of my attention there nowadays.  

—Now moving onto more career-oriented questions—

3. Do you like law? Like complexity? Why was Rx your first stop? Why is mega-fund PE your second stop?

When I was an undergraduate student, I was determined to do banking so I spent some time trying to figure out if I should do M&A or restructuring. During the summer after my freshman year, I read Distressed Debt Analysis by Moyer and fell in love with the field.

I was very focused on improving my knowledge during my sophomore year and was lucky enough to receive an offer from a strong restructuring group.

Over the next two years of college, I spent more time figuring out what I wanted to do in the long term and I realized I wanted to get exposure to classic investing as well (as opposed to staying in restructuring / credit for the first ~4 years of my career), and therefore I recruited for buyout Private Equity after my two years in restructuring. 

Looking backward, I believe that working in restructuring was 100% the right choice: I acquired a very broad set of skills and there are very few skills I missed out on by not working in M&A which is why I encourage everyone to pursue a career in restructuring—even if they do not want to work in credit in the long run. 

In terms of my role after banking, I decided to leave the distressed world because I wanted to get exposure to the other side of investing as well and I thought that joining a credit fund after a restructuring banking program would make it a lot tougher to leave that world after. While it has been a very formative experience, I am not feeling very passionate about my MF PE role and I will likely leave after two or three years.  

4. Do you believe that the smartest minds in finance hang around the Rx / Distressed Debt investing realm?

Unfortunately so.

Distressed debt investing presents much more complexities than other types of investing and this has historically attracted smart minds who want to bask in the technical nuance that turns many away. I say “unfortunately” because the combination of the density of smart minds and the limited dollar capacity of the industry (there can only be so many distressed deals/opportunities at any time), makes it extremely hard to generate great returns in this sector nowadays. 

Something I often share with younger students when asking me for career advice is to encourage them to think about Buffet’s quote “It doesn't matter how hard you row, it matters which boat you get in”. I would leave each of you to think about what industries you see expanding, but I think that is essential to keep in mind when making big decisions. 

5. What interview advice would you give to a college student? What are some red flags you’ve seen in candidates that our readers should be aware of?

To read the @Pari-Passu Newsletter ;)

Jokes aside, I would advise you to truly seek what you enjoy rather than follow what everyone thinks is the cool thing of the period. When I was in restructuring, the large majority of students I would interview had clearly no specific interest in restructuring but were pursuing it because it is often considered a more prestigious role.  

This ties well with the most common red flag which I have seen which is a lack of commitment and interest. If you started reading about restructuring last month, it is hard to believe this is something you are passionate about and want to spend several years of your career pursuing. 

In addition, another red flag is overconfidence or arrogance.

6. Do you consider yourself a ‘finance nerd?’ What do you dislike about finance (academically and professionally)?

I consider myself genuinely interested in the studying of the field in the sense that I enjoy understanding how transactions are structured, how companies work, what characteristics lead to outperformance, etc. This said, there are times when I do not feel as engaged as some of my colleagues are at work.

Buyout PE attracts many “finance nerds” and I recognize that there are people who love spending hours in their LBO more than I do.

What I dislike the most is the culture associated with the industry. While I generally enjoy a large percentage of the tasks that my work involves, the toxicity of the industry sometimes makes it really challenging to appreciate the opportunities that our job gives us.

7. What are a few of the biggest differences between working on the buyside vs. the sellside? Is the grass actually greener?

I wrote a great tweet a few weeks ago summarizing my first year in PE which I recommend everyone to read.

The key takeaway is that the grass is generally greener but not always. I had a very good banking experience, working on a topic that I was deeply passionate about with a great junior culture. While everyone always highlights the positives of the buyside, my experience has been less engaging than banking as I do not feel as passionate about the work that I am doing. Furthermore, this gets compounded by an often toxic culture, fewer juniors, and more challenging work.

—A bit about the investing landscape—

8. Investors like David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital see passive investing as a mechanism breaking markets, do you agree? Or does greater passive investing actually create a stronger opportunity for active managers to find alpha?

I disagree. Definitionally, greater passive investing creates more opportunities for mispricing which leads to greater pockets of alpha. Another claim that I often hear and disagree with is that stocks are not driven by fundamentals. While we all know markets can remain irrational longer than we can stay solvent, owning a stock means owning a right to the cash flow of the business, and eventually the market will get this right.

The time needed to reduce the gap between price and fundamentals might at times get dilated, but I do not think saying the market is broken is correct.

Thank you, @Restructuring! These were some incredible, honest insights into your account and your early career reflections. I hope our readers will use to enhance their own journeys. If you haven’t already, please drop @Restructuring a follow on Instagram and subscribe to his newsletter: @Pari-Passu Newsletter! (One of my personal favorites on Substack)

Let us know if you want to see more of these in the future! Let us know if there is someone specific you want us to reach!

Disclosure: Nothing written here is financial advice or should be used for investment decisions.

Work-life balance

Given the recent death of a BOFA banker and large banks’ policies to curb insane hours I thought it would be beneficial to talk about work-life balance and my take on it.

When you enter the banking, consulting, or buyside industry I think everyone goes in with the mindset that they are going to get worked very hard. 80-90 hour weeks are the norm which means getting home at crazy hours and working weekends. Because of long hours, bankers/consultants are paid very well and have access to great exit opportunities. However, for most people, these hours are not sustainable. That’s why you see lots of bankers decide not to do PE and instead pursue something less intense like Corp Dev or Investor Relations.

My take (which is still developing while working in my 20s):

1. You’ve got to have hobbies - If all you do is work you’ll burn out and it will negatively affect the rest of your career. Not only that your relationships will probably suffer. Having hobbies is a good way to maintain relationships (and make new ones) while spending some time away from work. They also make you a more interesting person.

2. Set aside time for exercise - This is hugely important because you don’t want to look in the mirror after two years of IB and be the fat balding guy who Doordashed shitty food for two years straight. If you exercise you’ll look better, feel better, and probably be more effective at work.

3. Call friends and family weekly - After college, your friends spread out and it becomes harder to stay in touch while working a grueling job. Set aside 15 minutes a week to call a friend or family member you haven’t talked to in a while. You’ll feel so much better because of it and your future self will be thankful that you made the effort to maintain your relationships.

Lastly, really spend time thinking about what you like and dislike about your job. Ask yourself why you're doing banking/consulting and why you’re interested in PE. Maybe even write it down. The answer you come up with will likely be different than the one you would give during an interview. I’m not trying to dissuade you from doing PE but I think too many people go that route because they think they have to. That’s totally not the case and if hated IB you probably won’t like PE either.

Going Forward:

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“The Pulse” #70