Associate - Strategic Advisory (Industrials)

PJT Partners' Strategic Advisory Industrials team in London is hiring an Associate. The listed responsibilities: evaluating, structuring and recommending financial and strategic alternatives, including the analysis of mergers, acquisitions and other strategic combinations, asset sales and divestitures; leading the day-to-day execution of transactions, including due diligence, valuation analysis and the negotiating of contracts and other agreements, working with senior management and coordinating analyst materials; analysing financial data and market developments; researching targeted industries; performing valuation analysis of prospective opportunities including the assessment of financial risks; designing quantitative models to assess the economic performance of targeted companies; preparing written analysis for use by PJT management and review by clients; participating in internal and external client meetings, contract negotiations and due diligence sessions; and mentoring and training juniors. Source

Industrials in London banking is eight sub-sectors that behave differently: Aerospace & Defence, Capital Goods & Machinery, Building Materials & Construction, Engineering & Professional Services, Transport & Logistics, Packaging, Conglomerates and Environmental Services. Aerospace aftermarket is defensive and trades at 15-22x EBITDA on 25-35% margins because airlines buy spare parts in any cycle; defence is government-funded with five-to-ten-year backlogs and European rearmament behind it; building materials have geographic moats because cement is heavy and priced locally; environmental services is defensive on contracted collection revenue. Capital goods and transport are the cyclical opposite, tied to PMI, industrial capex and container rates that swing fivefold. The craft is reading a backlog - book-to-bill above 1.0x means demand growing six to twelve months out - separating recurring aftermarket revenue from OEM, normalising to mid-cycle EBITDA rather than peak, running sum-of-the-parts on conglomerates with the 10-20% discount the market applies, and watching ROIC against WACC and free cash flow conversion, where 80-100% is healthy and below 60% is a flag. Deal flow comes from conglomerate break-ups, defence consolidation and private equity buy-and-build in fragmented services. Source

Three tokens. 'Associate' is the band that runs execution and directs the analysts. 'Strategic Advisory' is PJT's name for M&A advisory, and the point about it is what the firm's four service lines have in common - strategic advisory, shareholder advisory, restructuring and special situations, and private fund advisory through Park Hill are all advisory businesses. There is no lending or trading product being sold alongside the advice, so the pitch is the advice. '(Industrials)' is the coverage desk. PJT does not publish which of the eight sub-sectors above its London industrials team actually works on, so ask - a desk that lives on defence consolidation and one that lives on packaging buyouts want different reading from you before the interview.

The unit is the London Industrials desk inside PJT's global Strategic Advisory group, which the posting says is one of the most experienced teams in the industry and has been involved in some of the largest and most complex transactions of recent years, covering financial institutions, technology, media and telecommunications, natural resources, power and utilities, industrials, healthcare and real estate. On this desk specifically, the posting says the team 'is well established at the Partner and Managing Director levels and is looking for a candidate with relevant industrials experience, a strong interest in working across large and small companies and the personality to thrive as a key part of the industrials team'. Source

26 people have held London roles in PJT's Strategic Advisory group since 2018. That is the group, not this desk - there is no record of an Industrials node inside it - so treat 26 as the ceiling on how many people the industrials team could be, and assume the desk itself is a handful.

'Well established at the Partner and Managing Director levels' is the most useful sentence on the page. A desk that is senior-heavy and hiring at Associate is short of the people who actually build the models and run the processes, not short of people who win the work. That has a direct consequence: the deals reaching you would be live execution from the start, and there would be no queue of three other associates between you and the partner.

PJT Partners is a global advisory-focused investment bank whose senior professionals deliver strategic advisory, shareholder advisory, restructuring and special situations, and private fund advisory and placement services to corporations, financial sponsors, institutional investors and governments. Private fund advisory and fundraising for alternative investment managers - private equity funds, real estate funds and hedge funds - runs through PJT Park Hill. Source

150 people have held London roles at PJT Partners as a whole since 2018 - a substantial London presence for an advisory-only firm.

Worth knowing where the weight sits: 44 people since 2018 in PJT's London Restructuring unit against 26 in Strategic Advisory, 6 in M&A and 5 in Park Hill. Restructuring is the largest PJT London unit by some way, which is context for what the London office is known for even though this seat is not in it.

This row is tagged off-cycle on our site and it is not an off-cycle internship. The posting asks for a minimum of three years of directly comparable investment banking experience with a focus on M&A, so what it really is is a lateral Associate hire - an experienced banker moving firms. If you are a student searching for an autumn or winter internship, this is not one, and applying to it costs you an evening for nothing.

It opened on 20 August 2026 with no deadline, and named seats like this do not get one: it closes when someone accepts. Two and a half weeks old is genuinely early, which on a lateral seat is the only advantage available to you.

Stated qualifications: a bachelor's degree; a minimum of three years of directly comparable investment banking experience with particular focus on M&A; full breadth of financing experience - equity, equity-linked and debt - alongside strategic advisory experience; knowledge of and experience in the industrials industry and related transactions preferred; experience with financial modelling including developing detailed operating and valuation models for complex transactions; the professional maturity and experience to interact directly with clients and drive origination and execution; the ability to manage several projects at once; fluency in English required and another European language preferred. The posting says twice that the resume must be in PDF format, the second time under 'in order to be considered'. Source

Two lines in that list are doing more work than they look. 'Drive origination and execution' means an Associate here is expected to help bring work in, not only run it - so an application that only demonstrates modelling misses half of what is being asked for. And the PDF instruction is repeated and attached to the words 'in order to be considered': it is a filter, it costs you nothing to clear, and people fail it every week.