REGAL Investment Banking: The Group Nobody Talks About

Before Goldman TMT, I was in Wells Fargo's REGAL group, Real Estate, Gaming, and Lodging coverage investment banking. I got in through a cold application with no connections at all. Most people have never heard of a group like this, and a lot of them assume that means it isn't a real path. That assumption is wrong, and I want to walk through exactly why.

What REGAL actually is

REGAL stands for Real Estate, Gaming, and Lodging, a sector coverage group inside investment banking. At Wells Fargo specifically, REGAL was a spinout of Eastdil Secured's public real estate investment banking franchise, which is one of the more respected names in real estate banking, not a group built from scratch. Paired with Wells Fargo's own balance sheet, that combination made REGAL a genuine powerhouse: real M&A deal flow driven by balance-sheet relationships, and real debt-raising work for REITs and casino operators. I personally worked on deals connected to names like VICI and Blackstone during my time there. This was not a quiet, sleepy niche group. It had real deal flow because the group's relationships were held in genuinely high regard inside the bank.

How I broke in with no connections

I got the opening through a cold application, no warm intro, no prior connection to the group or the bank. During the process, a senior MD who was working in a different coverage group at the time (he was set to become department head the following year after bringing in middle-market private equity relationships) was impressed enough by our conversation that he specifically told me about the REGAL group and encouraged me to pursue it. That conversation is the entire reason I ended up there. It's a direct example of something I keep coming back to: a single well-placed conversation, not a warm connection you were born with, can redirect an entire career.

The technical bar: P/AFFO and REIT modeling

Getting into REGAL specifically required passing real estate-specific technical questions, not generic IB technicals. I was tested directly on metrics like Price to AFFO (adjusted funds from operations, the real estate equivalent of an earnings multiple) and REIT-specific modeling, since the group works constantly with REITs, real estate operators, and, in the gaming vertical specifically, casino operators raising debt. That technical bar is real and specific, and it's part of why the group commands real respect inside the industry even though it doesn't get talked about outside of it.

Why "not prestigious" is the wrong lens

A lot of people avoid groups like REGAL because they assume, wrongly, that it's not a prestigious enough path. I think that's a genuinely silly way to evaluate a coverage group. It is a real, durable career path with real exits: people who came out of REGAL went on to KKR and Blackstone real estate private equity, real estate tech, and casino and gaming finance on the operator side. The opportunities coming out of a group like this are, in my experience, endless, and I'd argue more interesting than a lot of the generalist groups people chase specifically because the name sounds more familiar.

The better question when you're picking a group isn't "does this sound prestigious to people outside finance," it's "does this group have a great leader and real relationships behind it." REGAL at Wells Fargo had both, which is exactly why the deal flow and the exits were as strong as they were, regardless of whether the group's name meant anything to someone outside the industry.

How REGAL became my path to Goldman TMT

Here's the part that surprises people: I moved from Wells Fargo REGAL to Goldman Sachs TMT. The bridge was gaming technology. REGAL's gaming coverage put me directly in touch with the tech side of gaming, which was genuinely flourishing at the time I was in the group. I loved that specific intersection enough that it became the exact thing that translated into TMT coverage at Goldman. The senior MD I mentioned earlier, who himself had come from a UBS-tier bank, used to point out that a lot of people specifically chase tech or consumer coverage because they think it's the cleanest path into generalist private equity. That's a real path, but it's not the only one, and it's not automatically the best one for a given person. My own path is proof that a so-called niche group can be the actual bridge to exactly the coverage area people think they need to start in directly.

Networking even at the junior level

One habit I built early and kept: I didn't just do the job in front of me, I actively used the relationships I was building. Even at Goldman TMT, I was able to introduce people from my earlier biotech and healthcare IR days directly into the Goldman network. I networked with founders. I once ended up networking with the head of investor relations at a public Fortune 100 company (I won't name it) on a cross-country flight from the West Coast to the East Coast. None of that was required of me at a junior level. I think it's exactly the habit that separates people who treat this as a job from people who treat it as a career built on relationships, and it's a habit worth building well before anyone tells you it matters.

What this actually means for you

If you land an offer in a coverage group you've never heard of, real estate, gaming and lodging, industrials, whatever it is, don't evaluate it by whether the name sounds impressive to people outside the industry. Evaluate it by the strength of the group's leadership and its actual relationships. I got into REGAL cold, with no connections, passed a real technical bar specific to that sector, and used it as a genuine bridge into exactly the tech coverage I eventually wanted. The path was never linear, and it didn't need to be. What made it work was building relationships actively at every level, not just doing the work directly in front of me.