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i have a question why the hell would you want to do any of this crap and how do you sleep at night. mods? (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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May 10, 2011 17:53
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forum id posted:i have a question why the hell would you want to do any of this crap and how do you sleep at night. mods? Well, that was unnecessary. There are a bazillion occupations that have their own megathreads, there's no reason that investment bankers shouldn't. It's also pretty obvious that you have no idea what banks do. tolerabletariff fucked around with this message at 03:53 on May 11, 2011 |
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May 11, 2011 01:14
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Roger Lowenstein (author of When Genius Failed and The End of Wall Street) wrote a great article for BusinessWeek addressing public outcry for criminal prosecution of bank executives. Link below. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_21/b4229060222515.htm
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May 16, 2011 13:56
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I'm sorry this is a vague question. But I have a friend who is a "Director" of Financial Products (I think) at a Canadian bank. How big of a deal is this? I thought it was a big deal when I saw his card saying he was Vice President but he said his current position is higher up.
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May 16, 2011 16:28
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blueblaze posted:I'm sorry this is a vague question. But I have a friend who is a "Director" of Financial Products (I think) at a Canadian bank. How big of a deal is this? It's a high-up position. The term "VP" usually conjurs up images of the CEO's right hand man, but in reality they are mid-level gophers. The typical hierarchy looks like this: C-Level Global Head/Co-Head Managing Director Director Vice President Associate Analyst That's a generalization and not all institutions follow those to a T.
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May 16, 2011 16:36
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blueblaze posted:I'm sorry this is a vague question. But I have a friend who is a "Director" of Financial Products (I think) at a Canadian bank. How big of a deal is this? As Thoogsby said, it's the position between Managing Director (higher) and VP (lower). Some banks have it labeled as Exec Director. Its basically on the higher end of middle management.
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May 17, 2011 01:25
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Oddly enough, UBS (and maybe RBC) calls everyone above Analyst a "director." Associates are "Associate Directors," VPs are "Directors," SVPs are "Executive Directors," and of course MDs run the show. That just seems unnecessarily confusing, especially considering Associates don't 'direct' poo poo (besides analysts and maybe interns).
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May 17, 2011 04:14
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My business title was "Head Bartender" until someone in regional mgmt flagged it and whined to our country head. What a party pooper. However my away message on chat is still "Like sands through the hourglass, so are the trades of our lives."
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May 17, 2011 05:51
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tolerabletariff posted:Oddly enough, UBS (and maybe RBC) calls everyone above Analyst a "director." Associates are "Associate Directors," VPs are "Directors," SVPs are "Executive Directors," and of course MDs run the show. That just seems unnecessarily confusing, especially considering Associates don't 'direct' poo poo (besides analysts and maybe interns). I work at a Canadian Bank and we have Associate, Associate Director, VP, Director, MD. No analyst level.
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May 17, 2011 12:36
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zmcnulty posted:However my away message on chat is still "Like sands through the hourglass, so are the trades of our lives." I'm going to steal this.
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May 17, 2011 14:38
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Thoogsby posted:It's a high-up position. The term "VP" usually conjurs up images of the CEO's right hand man, but in reality they are mid-level gophers. Citi (although there may be ranks I'd just never come across, it's a huge organization): C-Level Managing Director Director Senior VP VP Assistant VP Analyst/Specialist
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May 20, 2011 11:42
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forum id posted:i have a question why the hell would you want to do any of this crap and how do you sleep at night. mods? The way I see it, every "white-collar" job that's massively profitable, finance, law, and to a lesser extent medicine, has evolved a culture of long hours. I think it's because as a group in a service industry, if you want to increase profits, you need to work your existing employees harder. The reason you don't hire twice the employees is because this is a service industry and each employee needs to have a good pedigree, as people will only pay you millions to middle man a transaction if you're from Harvard, not the local community college. And of course, since the industries are so lucrative and require sitting in an office or at a desk, a lot of people want to pursue it and are willing to work harder and harder. And I sleep like a baby. You try working 12 or 14 hours a day and going to the gym every day. edit: Also for clarification, investment banking in general is not a morally questionable service. Investment banking groups assist large corporate and in my case municipal entities in accessing the capital market and borrowing money through stocks, bonds, and other instruments, often at their behest. While there is a degree of risk when you underwrite securities, the process in which you hand them cash and they hand you the instruments for sale to investors, I have never heard of an investment banking group posting a serious loss. In terms of the securities we bring to market, we help issue stocks and bonds not the products that led to the crash. These were investments in real estate and structured products based on mortgage debt, and more attributable to the structured products divisions and principal/prop units that invested the big bank's money into these products and debt. Even if everyone here doesn't work in investment banking, it's unlikely they had a role in anything related to the recent crash. edit2: Except leveraged finance people (the bankers to private equity groups, which buy a company and take it private using a great deal of debt, cut costs everywhere including personnel to squeeze out more cash, and use the profits to pay off the debt, and then eventually sell it once they've gained equity or take it public and take the ipo money), that all kinda seems evil in my mind. It's other groups in the investment banks, such as those who packaged and sold the alphabet soup of structured products based on various debts and mortgages and the principal and prop units who Its Miller Time fucked around with this message at 03:54 on May 23, 2011 |
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May 23, 2011 00:00
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Even investment bankers read Dune: http://epicureandealmaker.blogspot.com/2011/05/pebbles-in-stream.html Actually, one of the best blogs going around if you want to learn about the industry (not how to get into it). The writer is incredibly well-read and entertaining to read.
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May 29, 2011 22:47
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Any idea what the legal departments of investment banks (in a second tier city - Not NYC) are like? I'm applying for a job as a paralegal, and am curious if my hours would likely still be hell, which is what I'm trying to get away from currently.
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Jun 1, 2011 03:08
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I work pretty closely with our Legal folks for our credit stuff, and they are usually all gone by 6:30PM. YMMV.
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Jun 1, 2011 03:38
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HooKars posted:Any idea what the legal departments of investment banks (in a second tier city - Not NYC) are like? I'm applying for a job as a paralegal, and am curious if my hours would likely still be hell, which is what I'm trying to get away from currently. I work for a boutique bank; the legal department is stretched pretty thin (we are currently growing) and also works weekends as and when necessary. I suspect that the schedule would be gentler and more predictable at a bulge though
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Jun 1, 2011 06:15
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Ya just generally, it's the front office people that work "hellish" hours. The support positions tend to be appropriately shifted and good well paying jobs, though you might work a little more than 40 hours.
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Jun 1, 2011 06:21
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Really great Debt Capital Markets interview on M&I this morning: http://www.mergersandinquisitions.com/debt-capital-markets/
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Jun 8, 2011 13:43
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Yeah I saw that article too, I was one of the people who'd been long-awaiting it because I'm currently in a DCM-like role. It seems spot-on with the hours (the two full working-days I've been there I've done 8-9 or 8-10), and the exit opps (moving to research/sales/trading/M&A coverage as opposed to PE/HF/VC). I like when he goes outside of the usual M&A stuff, at this point M&I is the site of record for all things banking (from a breaking-in perspective) and M&A is really just a component of the IBD at most firms. Barring boutique advisories, of course. Ironically at the BBs M&A isn't even the big moneymaker, not sure if it ever was.Its Miller Time posted:It's other groups in the investment banks, such as those who packaged and sold the alphabet soup of structured products based on various debts and mortgages... I don't think the problem was with the investment banks. The lack of regulation at the time meant that the originating companies (lenders, etc.) retained zero risk, they could sell off their entire portfolios and then keep lending... The more loans the more money, and a whole lot of places (Ameriquest, Countrywide) didn't stop lending until they ran out of qualified obligors... and then when they ran out of able borrowers they just lowered the bar. Cue housing bubble bursting and mortgages going underwater, and all of the debt holding institutional investors take the hit. I also blame the rating agencies that didn't know (or, more accurately, preferred to ignore) the extent of the default risk on the underlying loans, and the investors that didn't do their homework. All the banks really did was advise on the creation of SPVs and make markets for the securities. There's still an alphabet soup of structured products but they're much more closely monitored by the risk folks and have MUCH more strict requirements (mandated by both the government and the banks) regarding risk retention and borrowing limits. Lots more credit enhancement nowadays, too--these securities are now actually worth their AAA/Aaa/A-1/P-1 ratings.
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Jun 9, 2011 05:21
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tolerabletariff posted:Ironically at the BBs M&A isn't even the big moneymaker, not sure if it ever was. Lot's of BB's don't have M&A groups. It's part of coverage. tolerabletariff posted:All the banks really did was advise on the creation of SPVs and make markets for the securities. I think you're underplaying the relationship between lenders and banks. Banks were buying up mortgage originators during the bubble so they were often part of the same entity.
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Jun 9, 2011 18:32
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Right, I meant fees from M&A advisory in total, whether done by M&A groups or industry coverage or what-have-you. Had the numbers to back it up but I forgot my Deals Intelligence login  I just learned that evidently my group is the most profitable one at the bank (according to the head, anyway). I'm not bragging, 'cause I guarantee it's the traders that are responsible for that and not the private-side bankers. It's incredible how much money they can make. It's also incredible how much they can eat.
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Jun 11, 2011 16:28
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Ya but I mean the bank realizes the quality is going down and continues to buy and merrily package them, slicing it up and waveing their finance fingers to get AAA ratings and the like. The nice thing about this is everyone gets to claim innocence, as they're just a middleman to the investor who will ultimately beary responsibility, but the banks were certainly a wiling partner and enabler in the massive explosion of securitized real estate backed products. Before this industry blew up originators had no one to pass off their loans on, it was the bankers who came in, bought the loans, and figured out how to slice and dice them to get good ratings, market them, and sold them to investors.
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Jun 13, 2011 08:17
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Rumor has it that Aramark is selling off SeamlessWeb to a PE firm. I'm hoping (praying) that this will NOT gently caress with the $25/night I get in return for my soul.
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Jun 14, 2011 06:32
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Its Miller Time posted:Ya but I mean the bank realizes the quality is going down and continues to buy and merrily package them, slicing it up and waveing their finance fingers to get AAA ratings and the like. The nice thing about this is everyone gets to claim innocence, as they're just a middleman to the investor who will ultimately beary responsibility, but the banks were certainly a wiling partner and enabler in the massive explosion of securitized real estate backed products. Before this industry blew up originators had no one to pass off their loans on, it was the bankers who came in, bought the loans, and figured out how to slice and dice them to get good ratings, market them, and sold them to investors. It was technically the U.S. Government that invented the mortgage backed security, not bankers. The banks just took it and made it wildly profitable and wholly dangergous.
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Jun 15, 2011 21:39
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Thoogsby posted:It was technically the U.S. Government that invented the mortgage backed security, not bankers. The banks just took it and made it wildly profitable and wholly dangergous. Lew Ranieri and Saloman disagree with you. Also (not directed at you), I find it pretty useless to try and assign blame for the crisis. Between the banks, the government, the (useless and corrupt) ratings agencies, and to a lesser extent the insurers every group played a crucial role, they were all enablers. Everyone made it worse, and everyone is at fault. It just seems like politicking to me to go much deeper than that.
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Jun 16, 2011 02:23
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R.A. Dickey posted:Lew Ranieri and Saloman disagree with you. Also (not directed at you), I find it pretty useless to try and assign blame for the crisis. Between the banks, the government, the (useless and corrupt) ratings agencies, and to a lesser extent the insurers every group played a crucial role, they were all enablers. Everyone made it worse, and everyone is at fault. It just seems like politicking to me to go much deeper than that. Lew invented securitization, not MBS. Per All The Devils are Here (which everyone should read) quote:Here’s a surprising fact: it was the government, not Wall Street, that first securitized modern mortgages. Ginnie Mae came first, selling securities beginning in 1970 that consisted of FHA and VA loans, and guaranteeing the payment of principal and interest. A year later, Freddie Mac issued the first mortgage-backed securities using conventional mortgages, also with principal and interest guaranteed. In doing so, it was taking on the risk that the borrower might default, while transferring the interest rate risk from the
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Jun 16, 2011 02:33
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Thoogsby posted:Lew invented securitization, not MBS. Per All The Devils are Here (which everyone should read) True, but he also innovated them and was essentially the reason they became so widespread. If I recall, wasn't one of the major stumbling blocks the prepayment risk, which he got around by breaking them up into tranches?
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Jun 16, 2011 02:40
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R.A. Dickey posted:True, but he also innovated them and was essentially the reason they became so widespread. If I recall, wasn't one of the major stumbling blocks the prepayment risk, which he got around by breaking them up into tranches? Yes, but the tranching development is usually attributed to Larry Fink at First Boston who was the founder and current CEO of BlackRock.
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Jun 16, 2011 02:49
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Thoogsby posted:Yes, but the tranching development is usually attributed to Larry Fink at First Boston who was the founder and current CEO of BlackRock. You're right, its been a while since I read Liar's Poker, which I was trying to recall.
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Jun 16, 2011 03:05
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Friend of a friend at my non-target school is doing a summer at GS Levfin. Miracles do happen.
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Jun 17, 2011 17:41
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OMFG. How?
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Jun 18, 2011 00:49
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My quick generic guide to breaking in from a non-target would be: 1. Go to events at the nearest target school near you. Travel hours if necessary. 2. Cold call/e-mail individuals or follow up with people you've met and ask incredible questions. Your passion for the industry must be clear and the person should end the call willing to go to bat for you. 3. Be fortunate Real answer: 1. Know someone. Its Miller Time fucked around with this message at 03:05 on Jun 19, 2011 |
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Jun 18, 2011 01:36
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I met someone briefly at a networking event. How do I not gently caress up carrying out 2 with them? Edit: Is early summer a relative period of calm for campus recruiters or are they gonna be too busy prepping for recruiting season? realqueenbetty fucked around with this message at 02:03 on Jun 18, 2011 |
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Jun 18, 2011 01:51
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realqueenbetty posted:OMFG. How? He's extremely bright from a financial perspective and did a co-op with GSAL and parlayed it into a summer internship. I'm not sure how he ended up in Levfin. Regardless, going from a non-target to one of the most difficult groups to break into anywhere is impressive. If he manages to land a full time offer he could be at Blackstone/TPG/Fortress a few years out. There are a lot of bright kids coming out of Northeastern right now. Lots of good placement for a non-target if you're willing to work your dick off. But also what Miller Time said, meet people. Knowing someone on a social level is 1000x more useful than being an annoying email in their inbox. Thoogsby fucked around with this message at 03:23 on Jun 18, 2011 |
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Jun 18, 2011 03:17
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I've just interviewed with a markets department at larger bank (Scandinavia) for an entry-level position. Now, I'm not really comfortable with IB jargon yet, so I'm wondering; is what is done in a capital markets or debt capital markets department generally denoted investment banking? What is the dominant sector of the IB industry? Sorry for the dumb question, I never thought I'd work in a bank. I've majored in economics and have been thinking I want to work with analysis (I wanna save the world yada yada). Turns out the most straightforward path to becoming a macro analyst is through banking.
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Jun 20, 2011 17:41
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aki posted:Is what is done in a capital markets or debt capital markets department generally denoted investment banking? There isn't a definitive answer to this but for the most part yes. I don't think anyone would take issue with a DCM Analyst saying they worked in Investment Banking but the bank itself may consider Capital Markets and The Investment Banking Division to be different entities. Mergers & Inquisitions (link in the OP) has write-ups on both DCM and ECM if you want to learn more. aki posted:What is the dominant sector of the IB industry? No real answer here either. It's bank specific and the scope of what falls under the Investment Banking umbrella is too large to quantify what's the most dominant because you'd be comparing apples to oranges.
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Jun 20, 2011 17:54
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aki posted:I've just interviewed with a markets department at larger bank (Scandinavia) for an entry-level position. Now, I'm not really comfortable with IB jargon yet, so I'm wondering; is what is done in a capital markets or debt capital markets department generally denoted investment banking? What is the dominant sector of the IB industry? One more vote, but in my view the debt capital markets work depends a lot on the specifics of what you are doing. That gets pretty close to more boring commercial banking work unless you are doing aggressive stuff. But even on the aggressive stuff you are much more often dealing with the CFO or treasurer at the client vs the CEO and board (ie M&A, equity offerings). Not always true, but moreso the case in general I think than ECM or M&A. Ironically I'd also tell you given your interest in analysis...debt is the best place to be to do innovative financial structuring.
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Jun 20, 2011 19:29
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Thanks for answers both of you. Waiting for the call of confirmation (or not) today.Mr. WTF posted:One more vote, but in my view the debt capital markets work depends a lot on the specifics of what you are doing. That gets pretty close to more boring commercial banking work unless you are doing aggressive stuff. But even on the aggressive stuff you are much more often dealing with the CFO or treasurer at the client vs the CEO and board (ie M&A, equity offerings). Not always true, but moreso the case in general I think than ECM or M&A.
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Jun 21, 2011 08:23
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tolerabletariff posted:Rumor has it that Aramark is selling off SeamlessWeb to a PE firm. I'm hoping (praying) that this will NOT gently caress with the $25/night I get in return for my soul. Worry not, I can assure you my coworkers will have gathered the torches and pitchforks and assembled a posse to protect your right to nightly compensation via thousands of free, delicious calories if it ever becomes an issue. P.S.: You have the best avatar. I'm a first-year Global Markets (S&T) analyst for the NYC office of a bulge bracket European investment bank, in training-rotation mode until the end of the year. I graduated from CMU this May (BusAdmin w/ Finance track) and did an internship at the same firm last summer. Have any of you gone into trading without the quant background of a financial engineering, computational finance, or general math/stats program? Was it a struggle to master the work? Did you feel disadvantaged relative to those with quant backgrounds? I did internship rotations in both sales and trading; I'm conflicted about what to do full-time. I thought I would end up in sales, since I didn't have the quantitative experience of students coming out of CMU's badass computational finance program and worried about competing with those who have that background. I'm good at math/stats and learn quickly, and I've taken math and finance courses relevant to trading, just not as many as you'd get from a more quantitative major. When I rotated in FX options trading, I LOVED the desk and the product, although getting up to speed was tough. Not impossible, but very challenging relative to being on a rates sales desk in the 1st half of the summer. I absorbed a lot of knowledge and got good reviews from my manager there, but I know other interns who figured things out on their trading desks faster than me because they'd seen it before. Three more rotations to go after training ends, so I'll get a few more shots at figuring it out. There are also a few things I can answer questions about : - The recruiting process, for S&T and internships in particular. I used to run of one my university's finance-oriented student orgs, which worked with a lot with firms on campus recruiting andI've been lucky enough to talk with employees from nearly every bank for which we're a target school about their recruiting processes, what they expect from candidates, and so on. We're no Ivy, but we get a lot of bulge bracket banks and a few buy-side players. - I spent a few years as a TA/instructor for Tepper's professional communications department, so I can talk about resumes/cover letters, interviewing, networking, and things like that. And of course, I have some reasonably successful experience being the interviewee. - How handle S&T internships and get the offer. - Being in the gender-minority on Wall Street. Since this is a thread on SomethingAwful about investment banking I'm not sure how many of my female contemporaries will read this, but it's a worth a shot. I can talk about the day to day experiences of working on a 90% male trading floor, socializing/networking with the male cohort outside of work, the kinds of women's initiatives/clubs you're likely to find on the job, and female-specific recruiting opportunities I encountered. Regarding the latter, I was not a fan of them after a negative experience with one, but they are out there and I'm familiar with some of them. Back at school, a lot of younger female students who knew me via the school finance club expressed concerns about getting into the industry and fitting in on the job, and since my work experience thus far has been very positive, I like to provide a counterpoint to the negative stories out there that might be causing second thoughts. PurePerfection fucked around with this message at 10:08 on Jun 21, 2011 |
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Jun 21, 2011 10:01
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PurePerfection posted:
...man I so wish there were more women in banking. It is an industry that could absolutely use the balance and perspective provided by both genders. Of the 15 years I've been in it (M&A), I've probably seen about 1-5% women at my firm, excluding assistants. It is a serious problem.
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Jun 22, 2011 17:56
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