Somebody askes me how life of an investment bank analyst is. I look on the web for some scary stories and found these. It is typically not mine in the past and hope will not be in the future.
A Day in the Life of an Investment Banking Analyst
“6:30 Sycophant drops by on his way out. Client meeting next Friday but wants complete turn of a pitch for first thing tomorrow morning (tomorrow morning = when he finally gets around to looking at it at some point next week). A quick calculation; there’s no way I’m getting out of here before four in the morning.”
-The Bitter Investment Banker Email
Ah, the life of an investment banking analyst. What will your hours be? How much work do you actually do? Is it true you play Solitaire most of the day and then only work at night?
Some days you’ll be so busy that you have to discreetly use a bottle under your desk if you need to go to the bathroom because you just don’t have time to go.
Other days you’ll have so little to do that you can take 3-hour lunch breaks and download different themes for Windows Solitaire.
Doing investment banking is like doing drugs: on your good trips you dance in clouds of marshmallows, surrounded by by beautiful women (or men, whatever you like) serving you fruit in canopies. On your bad trips you scratch your eyes out or jump off buildings.
This 24-hour period was a bad trip. And unlike The Bitter Investment Banker Email, it actually happened.
7:30 AM – I am woken up by an Associate at work asking where I am. He told me to come in at 8:00 AM to send out a status report. It’s 7:30 and I’m not there yet, so a cloud of panic has descended. I roll out of bed, shower for a minute and head into work.
8:00 AM – 9:00 AM – The Associate hands me a marked up version of the status report in question. Most of his changes consist of adding/deleting commas, capitalizing nouns or changing font sizes. I send it to our team at 8:55, in advance of our call at 9:00.
9:00 AM – 10:00 AM – Our investment banking team tells management about all the buyers who are interested in them and the meetings we’ve set up.
I am vaguely listening but also working on a pitch book for an IPO in the background – multi-tasking is easy when you paste Excel tables into PowerPoint and properly align them while listening to bankers ramble on.
12:30 PM – We send out a draft of the IPO pitch book to 3 Managing Directors who will be at the meeting the next day. This is the “final” version, which means that everything will be scrapped and re-done in the next 24 hours.
12:45 PM – One of the Managing Directors is traveling and has requested a Briefing Book on the IPO prospect in question because he doesn’t know anything about it. It’s not feasible to FedEx the book because he is 3,000 miles away and needs it ASAP – we need to PDF this bad boy.
1:00 PM – The Associate drops off revisions to a presentation we’re working on for another client. I tell him I’m working on a big IPO pitch for the next day as well. He tells me to finish by 5 so he can give me more changes and I can do another revision by the morning. It’s probably going to be an all-nighter.
1:30 PM – One of the Managing Directors who received the Briefing Book calls another Associate (Associate #2) on my team and yells at him for sending 100 pages of material – it’s taking 30 minutes to print out everything.
The Associate takes the brunt of the damage. I’ve cleverly avoided the fallout by having Associate #2 be the point person for this project.
3:00 PM – Starbucks. The lifeblood of investment banking analysts. I go with a friend who’s in the midst of private equity interviews and we discuss how those are going.
3:30 PM – After speaking with our research analyst (through compliance, thanks Elliot Spitzer) the Managing Director decides we need to add more analysis to our pitch and focus on completely different metrics. I need to re-do most of my work.
5:00 PM – I finish up with the other client presentation that Associate #1 wanted me to finish. Now it’s a waiting game on that one as I continue revising the IPO pitch.
7:30 PM – I’m eating dinner at my desk. No time to go join everyone else today but it’s Japanese food so I’m satisfied. Meanwhile someone from Equity Capital Markets, the team responsible for IPOs, comes over and tells me to scrap all the analysis the MD wanted.
10:00 PM – I get last-minute changes from everyone else on the team. Shouldn’t take too long to process, but production can probably only start printing at midnight, which means I’m going to be here until 1 AM minimum.
10:15 PM – As I’m going through changes, Associate #1 stops by and has a bunch of changes to the client presentation I finished at 5 PM. I tell him I can only get started at 1 AM so I probably won’t have anything until the next morning. “Dance, monkey.”
12:30 AM – I finish up and production starts printing the presentations. Associate #2 comes over to “supervise” the production and review the finished product.
1:00 AM – I notice an inconsistency on 1 slide – stock prices have been updated earlier in the presentation but not here. Time to check over everything again.
2:00 AM – We’re done re-checking every single page for the same mistake now. Time to re-print.
2:15 AM – The printers all have paper jams and are out of ink. Since it’s late, the printing/production crew has mysteriously disappeared. I am the production team.
2:15 – 3:30 AM – I need to refill the ink and fix all the printers. This requires a group effort so I call some other analysts over to help.
4:00 AM – Go home and go to sleep. I need to wake up by 6 to finish work on the presentation Associate #1 told me to “finish for this morning.”
6:00 AM – I’ve overslept. Associate #1 is already up and has left 3 voicemails on my cell phone asking why I haven’t sent the presentation to our client yet. I blackberry him that I was up all night working on another pitch and was going to send it by 9 but needed an hour of sleep first.
6:15 AM – 6:30 AM – As I’m coming into the office we’re trading angry emails back and forth. He says I should have emailed our entire group saying that the presentation would be late.
8:00 AM – Associate #1 strolls into the office just as I’m about to hit the “Send” button. I tell him this and show him the presentation. He tells me to email everyone twice – once to tell them that they’ll get the presentation in the next 2 minutes, and then once again to actually send the presentation.
http://www.mergersandinquisitions.com/investment-banking-analyst-life-worst-day/
ANOTHER USEFUL SOURCE IS HERE
Investment Banking: Life as an Analyst
Analysts are typically recent undergraduates who work long hours and do a fair bit of grunt work. A good analyst helps his or her boss get their job done and done well. Analysts are not normally expected to contribute in meetings but often can. Many analysts return to the business. Others choose to try other opportunities. During recruiting out of an MBA program, former analysts will be at a significant advantage over others without experience.
Key analyst skills include:
the ability to work with Excel spreadsheets,
write macros in VBA,
track and generate weekly newsletters (weeklies),
keep schedules,
generate prospectuses,
get burgers
put in and retrieve pitch books from the copy center
and answer client phone calls.
Success Factors
Key success factors include (i) getting your job done well and without friction, (ii) getting things done on time, (iii) asking for help when you need it, (iv) dressing neatly, (v) not complaining, gossiping or whining, (vi) learning to use the library and the web to do research, (vii) become a whiz-kid with Bloomberg, Excel, Word and Powerpoint, (viii) always give your boss credit, (ix) know when to cheer up your boss and (x) know when to stay out of the way.
A good analyst also networks, observes and thinks. You want to be genuine yet make it clear that you like your boss. Excessive posterior kissing is a negative. It's always good to have a little hobby as well like following stocks, playing Liars Poker or following currencies. You can do this when things get quiet in August.
Assessment
It's a tiring life but gives you a good chance to learn the investment banking field and bond with people whom you will work with later. Being an analyst is one of the best ways to break into a very good field. The return on investment from being a good analyst can be over 50 times what they actually pay you.
After two years, most analysts leave to get their MBA or pursue other positions. It all depends on the firm. Some places have a pretty strict policy of getting rid of you. Others are more mellow. It makes sense, after all, to try to keep very good people who can get a job done. If you don't go back and get an MBA you might benefit from going out and getting a CFA.
Recommended Books
Fundamentals of Corporate Finance
By Brealey, Myers and Marcus. An excellent, detailed book on topics in corporate finance. If you want to study what the field is about, this is a good book to start with. Keep this at your desk. An alternative finance reference book to use is Fundamentals of Corporate Finance by Ross Westerfield and Jordan.
The Economist.
A great source for info on what's happening in the world.
Wall Street Journal.
Should read this every day. The Financial Times is also quite informative
Vault Career Guide to Investment Banking
Guide covers the basics of financial markets, including walk-throughs of equity and fixed income offerings, and M&A private placements and reorgs, and dissects career paths and job responsibilities at departments such as corporate finance, sales and trading, research, and syndicate.
Investment Banking:
Life as an Analyst
Analysts are typically recent undergraduates who work long hours and do a fair bit of grunt work. A good analyst helps his or her boss get their job done and done well. Analysts are not normally expected to contribute in meetings but often can. Many analysts return to the business. Others choose to try other opportunities. During recruiting out of an MBA program, former analysts will be at a significant advantage over others without experience.
Key analyst skills include:
the ability to work with Excel spreadsheets,
write macros in VBA,
track and generate weekly newsletters (weeklies),
keep schedules,
generate prospectuses,
get burgers
put in and retrieve pitch books from the copy center
and answer client phone calls.
Success Factors
Key success factors include (i) getting your job done well and without friction, (ii) getting things done on time, (iii) asking for help when you need it, (iv) dressing neatly, (v) not complaining, gossiping or whining, (vi) learning to use the library and the web to do research, (vii) become a whiz-kid with Bloomberg, Excel, Word and Powerpoint, (viii) always give your boss credit, (ix) know when to cheer up your boss and (x) know when to stay out of the way.
A good analyst also networks, observes and thinks. You want to be genuine yet make it clear that you like your boss. Excessive posterior kissing is a negative. It's always good to have a little hobby as well like following stocks, playing Liars Poker or following currencies. You can do this when things get quiet in August.
Assessment Small Sales and Trading Desk
It's a tiring life but gives you a good chance to learn the investment banking field and bond with people whom you will work with later. Being an analyst is one of the best ways to break into a very good field. The return on investment from being a good analyst can be over 50 times what they actually pay you.
After two years, most analysts leave to get their MBA or pursue other positions. It all depends on the firm. Some places have a pretty strict policy of getting rid of you. Others are more mellow. It makes sense, after all, to try to keep very good people who can get a job done. If you don't go back and get an MBA you might benefit from going out and getting a CFA.
Recommended Books
Fundamentals of Corporate Finance
By Brealey, Myers and Marcus. An excellent, detailed book on topics in corporate finance. If you want to study what the field is about, this is a good book to start with. Keep this at your desk. An alternative finance reference book to use is Fundamentals of Corporate Finance by Ross Westerfield and Jordan.
The Economist.
A great source for info on what's happening in the world.
Wall Street Journal.
Should read this every day. The Financial Times is also quite informative. 85 Broad Street, NY
HQ of Goldman Sachs
Vault Career Guide to Investment Banking
Guide covers the basics of financial markets, including walk-throughs of equity and fixed income offerings, and M&A private placements and reorgs, and dissects career paths and job responsibilities at departments such as corporate finance, sales and trading, research, and syndicate.
Valuation: Measuring and Managing the Value of Companies
by McKinsey and Company
A classic that should be in the cube of every analyst and associate on the Street. Another fabulous valuation book is Damodaran on Valuation: Security Analysis for Investment and Corporate Finance
Equity Valuation: Models from Leading Investment Banks
By Jan Viebig
This book brings together expertise from UBS, Morgan Stanley, DWS Investment GmbH and Credit Suisse, providing a unique analysis of leading equity valuation models, from the very individuals who use them. Filled with real world insights, practical examples and theoretical approaches, the book will examine the strengths and weaknesses of some of the leading valuation approaches.
Finance and Investment Handbook
Applied Mergers and Acquisitions
by Robert F. Bruner and Joseph Perella
Wall Street Lingo
http://www.careers-in-finance.com/ibanalyst.htm
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