How Do I Sign Indiana Banking PPT

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[Music] hello everyone this is Sonali Mongol and welcome to another episode of learn educate discover on this podcast we invite people from different professions on each of our episodes and we ask them a range of questions to try and understand what their job is all about the goal of this podcast is to try and educate our listeners about as many different kind of jobs as we can so that someone listening to the show and decide does a certain job sound interesting to them and if yes how do they go about exploring it further on today's show we finally are going to be talking about a career in finance this is something that has been requested quite a few times so I'm really happy that we are going to be covering something in finance and on today's episode we'll be talking about Investment Banking so an investment bank is nothing but a financial institution that helps other entities such as corporations and governments and even individuals to raise financial capital so as an example let's say there's a company that is looking to raise funds from the public and they decide to go in for an IPO or an initial public offering then in such a scenario they might decide to hire an investment bank to help them manage this process and figure out various things including at what price per share should the IPO so that they are able to maximize the amount of money that they're able to raise from this IPO so that's an example of what an investment bank does and of course they do a number of other things such as mergers and acquisitions helping companies raise debt and a number of other things so that's sort of a very rough introduction to Investment Banking and to really help us understand this area in detail and in layman's language our guest on today's show is ours on ramen wallah and he is a part of the technology investment banking team at Deutsche Bank and he's based here in San Francisco ours on has been working in this space for more two years now he started out in the financial institutions group at Deutsche Bank he was based in New York and then about a year ago he switched over to technology in terms of his background our son has a Bachelor of Science in accounting and computer information systems from Indiana University and then he also has an MBA with a concentration in finance from the Wharton School University of Pennsylvania our Jean worked as a consultant with Ernst & Young for about five years before his MBA and then after his MBA he switched over to Investment Banking hours on comes with a lot of create experience in the space and as you'll see in the discussion he is going to be sharing a lot of helpful details to really help us understand what working as an investment banker is all about so I really hope you enjoy today's discussion and without further ado let's welcome our Jean to the show [Music] here's an how are you thank you for joining us hey tsunami I'm doing great thanks a lot for having me yeah absolutely man there's been a lot of requests for careers in finance so I'm looking forward to yeah I'm surprised I'm surprised used to have so much interest in finance so we will talk about that and I do have a confession to make which is that despite having an MBA and that do from a school which is known for finance should I have zero zero idea about finance and more even kidding over here so if I ask you silly questions I apologize in advance so I wanted to start out with a little bit of a rapid-fire before we get into the discussion so you ready so in the last year or so what is the earliest time that you got into office earliest time was probably about 45 minutes after I left so you left at 7:15 a.m. from office and then you came uh-huh yeah and then you came yeah I think that was probably the worst night I had where I managed it home only for 45 minutes basically taking half an hour nap where I said three alarms at 10-minute intervals to make sure that I don't fall into deep sleep and then take a quick shower and come back in for a meeting oh all right that's pretty crazy yeah so we should probably talk more about that like why would you stay in office till 7:15 yeah yeah and so I guess so my next question was what is the minimum amount of sleep you've had in a night I'm guessing that was the night yeah there were definitely a few all-nighters especially my first year so there is definitely nights where I've gone without any real tangible sleep apart from you know quick naps I see and generally what is the average amount of sleep you can get in a day the average fluctuates I think the one thing you realize really quickly unless in banking there's no such thing as average it's a very lopsided lifestyle where things can be really crushing at one stage and then really quiet a little bit later so thanks for it a lot but you know if you try to make a you know smacking then eventually you try to gravitate towards having a more balanced lifestyle and we're trying to get those average are a six eight hours of sleep that any normal human being that means yeah this has Dean otherwise yeah yeah oh I do I do have seniors who you know somehow managed to survive on you know for five hours on a consistent basis I see and then the big question which is that what is the sort of typical range of bonus that you can expect as an associate in investment banking yeah so the range of bonuses fluctuate a lot as well they've improved a lot recently I'm still movin near what they were pre-crisis V 2008 but much better than they were in the few years after the crisis but typically you can expect something in the range of seventy two hundred and thirty percent of your salary depending on you know what kind of bank you're working at what coop you're in and how well it's performing and how you want all this was so it can be quite a wide range if it's anything under you know sixty seventy percent of your full year's salary then either the forum is going through a really bad stage or basically hinting at you there's no future there alright right so if you were to convert these percentages into dollar value yeah so the way it usually works is that a first-year associate comes in at about one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars and so your bonus would you know be about anywhere between eighty thousand two hundred and fifty thousand and then it kind of increases from there about twenty percent per year for your three years of associate I see I see okay no this is interesting but and the reason I ask these questions is because I mean based of course on what I've heard from others in this industry but Investment Banking is clearly if you look at the working as it might seem very crazy to a lot of people but then it is also a place where you can learn a lot you worked really hard and the financial rewards are also fairly good compared to other industries yeah exactly yeah so it's a very attractive option for people coming right out of school whether it's out of undergrad or master's level business school because like you said you know you learn a lot you make some really quick money and then you reach a stage where you can evaluate whether this is something you want to keep doing for a long term or explore other exit options that you can go on to other yeah yeah yes all right so yeah so before we talk more about Investment Banking why don't you you know just tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey so far sure yeah I think you covered it pretty well I grew up in the Middle East in Bahrain I'm originally from India came to the u.s. to study for undergrad and decided to stay on here after that I joined to ask young Chicago I do that for three years and then moved to New Zealand for a year just because I wanted to try something different and be in a different geography and it was really when I was at ey where you know I was working really long hours and not making as much money as I knew people finance Nick who which is what really kind of drew me towards considering an alternative career and decided to go back Business School and Wharton being you know a great finance school decided to go there and so you know I was really excited to come to Wharton had a great two years yes decision I ever made and yes since then you know I've made that switch to finance and been working it deutsche bank for the last two and half years moved over to the Bay Area from New York last year I thought a lot about between New York and San Francisco right of school and felt that New York is you know the great finance city and definitely wanted to eat you know have that experience of working in New York also did that for a couple of years but eventually you came out here with the Bay Area justice I've always been passionate about technology and then focused in that space and so sure this was the best place to be for that yeah absolutely and in fact I did want to touch upon and will do that which is the you know what is the difference that you've seen having worked both in the financial institution side and now the technology side in investment banking but before we do that why don't you first you know give us an introduction to what is Investment Banking I'm sure even though you said you don't really know much what financed you you know explained it really well it's basically providing companies both big and small American and global companies with financial or strategic advice on corporate finance bridging that with your overall company strategy and so when you think about corporate finance ichika vice the main areas would be you know how to be efficient with the capital and how to figure out you know where to allocate your capital whether it's raising more capital through either equity or debt or whether it's spending that capital that positions more on other things like share buybacks or increasing dividends so it's it's usually a combination of providing holistic advice on how to manage a company's capital and at the same time and holding them or walking down through transactions when they have decided and what you do and then of course as a full-service investment bank the Deutsche Bank is or any bells bracket would be we also have our own balance sheet and lend to companies and so we do the credit writing process for that then help them with with any leverage that they would need in terms of acquisitions or other requirements mm-hmm yes so you know so you come from a consulting background yourself right so when you describe Investment Banking is very similar to financial advisory right is it just very sophisticated financial consulting you can say that it's it's kind of a mix of financial consulting and providing credit to companies you know for example we would have a client call us and be like we have this situation we have this much debt what kind of rhetoric will be looking for in terms of if you potentially buy something you know what should we do Howard shareholders react just a good time you know for us to buy back our debt can you give us your thoughts and so then you know we put together materials to kind of give our thoughts on answering all those questions and you know that would be the advisory aspect you know where for example you know we may say that you know these are the benefits of raising debt to finance the transaction these are the benefits of raising equity these are how shareholders might react if you announce a transaction these are the reasons why you should consider you know these two three alternatives in time in terms of buying something or partnering with someone and things like that and then finally if they do decide to divide in something then you know we'd help them structure the transaction finance the transaction do the bidding go through the process the due diligence and all that kind of stuff I see so what you're saying is that there's the advisory portion where you will say that okay what are the pros and cons of maybe raising capital from the market etc etc but then if the client decides to go ahead with it then you're also structuring the transaction for them which you might not find an accounting firm yeah okay yeah exactly and you know hand in hand hand in hand for example if you're doing and I feel one of the most important decisions you make I feel is when you actually go to market to sell the shares and get investor interest and you know go public with the filing and so you know that takes a lot of experience and skill in terms of figuring it out when is the best time to go to market you know one of the conditions how our investor is going to react to this particular issue and kind of you know walking through the client with that those many times we have clients that you know really want to raise the money as soon as they can and price the highest level they want but sometimes you know you can't have the best of both worlds you know getting the price you want and at the time you want it and so you know it takes a lot of experience and understanding of the markets and you know having a year with investors and kind of passing all that kind of information yeah and the make sense and and you mentioned that Deutsche Bank is a bulge bracket bank so what's a bulge bracket Bank yes so for anyone you know who starts looking into potential trading this backing that's the first one of the first nuances that they'll come across is you know the this kind of delineation between Birch brackets and boutiques and both brackets are basically you know the more bigger well-known family in games like in the u.s. convinced I X Bank of America Merrill Lynch Citibank Morgan Stanley the bigger banks you know that have larger passes listening associates and provide their own balance sheet in terms of lending to companies so normally two they provide advice but also the financing when a company does to a transaction and then they also do equity capital market stuff like IPOs and follow-ons and all that kind of stuff and usually this requires a company not only to have an investment banking corporate finance unit but also sales and trading unit you know where they're actually dealing with equities and being able to sell different financial instruments whether it's equity or debt boutique advisory on the other hand something like a bolus or an Evercore is something that you know works strictly on advice itself and they'll help clients Advisory Park and I explained as well as going through a transaction so they're more M&A focused but they won't actually provide the financing and then if they won't do any capital market stuff like IPOs so when you say they don't provide financing you mean like you're able to actually give someone alone exactly yeah so you know they would think like for example if you're buying a house if you were buying a house to be on the market you'd have to go to a realtor to help you find the house and actually buy the house and at the same time you'd go to a mortgage lender to actually lend you the money right right and so think of a bunch bracket as someone who's the realtor and a bank writing the mortgage to be advising you on which house to buy how can you go through the process to buy the house and at the same time providing at the money but the boutique would be you know just the realtor they wouldn't be doing the mortgage they tell you in a go to 12 swap go to Wells Fargo to get your mortgage but they help you actually buy the house and figure out which house to buy yeah that's an amazing analogy that really simplifies things yeah I think we'll also be really helpful is that if you can give making on in very simple terms an overview of the finance industry and you know where investment bank comes in or MSN bank Ioan comes in now sure yeah so before you even get into about racket and boutique a bigger distinction in overall finance that anyone who's interested in the space would come across is the distinction between bias Island South Side south side is basically we're investing six and it's you know nice outside because you're basically helping companies you know with either selling shares or representing companies on the private side the buy side is known simply because it represents buyers so that would be private equity firms pension funds hedge funds any kind of institutional buyers where companies are actually buying forms directly and hol ing direct stakes in the companies that we acquire and so usually you know that's the broader distinction within the sell side then you have the investment banks and then that you obviously have different functions I suppose in the corporate finance function and then you have the sales and trading function you know where you could be any kind of from dozens of different things you know can be a dead-ass trader you know back in 2008 you could have been structuring what gage securities which obviously still happens so you know all kinds of different financial processing yeah yeah no absolutely you know this is helpful so basically I mean in very simple terms sell-side is basically when you're trying to sell financial assets and by side is when you are buying financial as and because it mess when banking is on the sell side not only are you helping them sell financial asses but you're also advising them around the whole thing so like with an investment banking as you said there's corporate finance and then their sales and trading it will be helpful if you can just like you know give us a few sort of lines on what is corporate finance within Investment Banking and what is sales and trading with an investment banking yes finance is basically the stuff I do and that's traditionally known as a Miss backing and that's you know what explained in terms of advisory and capital market stuff it's basically you know advising companies on M&A helping them go to the process and then doing IPOs and debt related transactions all kinds of capital markets transactions sales are trading it's it's a very evolving place at this point in time especially with dodd-frank and all the changes that have come from that and and that's the area that has been largely the trouble area for banks in terms of all the litigation and fees and fines and the loss making that's if your financial statements traditionally sales and training I was divided between was known as proprietary trading trading where banks traded on your own books and so it's like you buying stocks and bonds in the market thanks would do the same thing for their own balance sheet did you know have they don't put slowly of stocks and bonds and then they would trade on behalf of other clients and so that would be basically trading for their clients and that also involves a lot of derivatives trading and so having companies with hedging you know whether it's interest rate swaps or currency swaps there's a kind of technical terms but basically you know just protecting yourself from fluctuations in interest rates or currencies anything that you know has a potential for tuition for example you know if you're trading with a country in Europe and you're worried about the fluctuation in the exchange rate between euro and u.s. dollars and you want to hedge that and have a fixed rate you know then you'd go to a bank and the currency rate desk would help you with that and so the proprietary trading is the piece that has been slowly going away in that the Volcker rule from dodd-frank has kind of made very difficult to onerous for banks to do for the other part which is doing trading on behalf other clients still there and will probably remain okay yeah no that makes sense okay so sales and trading is basically I mean for the most part it's trading on behalf of your clients in a whole bunch of different assets okay got it so then within your sort of traditional investment banking are there specializations that you can have various specializations yeah so within Investment Banking you usually can slot it into three kind of roles one would be generalist and that's usually seen more more often in boutiques where you're kind of you know at a small place and so you focus on all industries and are not you know in a particular coverage group and the second thing would be being in a coverage group which is more likely to happen at a bigger bulge bracket where we focus on a particular industry for example I'm the technology coverage group and so I travel clients the tech tech industry and the third would be being in the product group which is also usually only in bulk packets and that's basically you not directly you know working in a particular industry but you're focusing on a particular product so you might be in an M&A troop and only do M&A for companies in any industry or you might be in equity capital markets and only do equity stuff like IPOs and follow-ons and things to that I see okay you know I think at this point it might be really helpful to talk about sort of you know what is sort of the typical project or a typical problem that you might work on depending on whether you're working as a generalist or if you're focused on an industry or if you focused on a product group so let's take the example of a company that is looking to IPO so in the ad case so if they come to an investment a confirm like they come to Deutsche Bank because it's an IPO they would be looking they would be working with the product group then which is equity capital markets group yes I see a question so basically they would work always with the coverage banker initially the coverage banker is the one who holds client relationships you may have heard the word pitching which is where you actually go and have initial meetings with companies and try to win work from them and that's always done by the coverage team and so it's a coverage banker that would you know build a relationship and bring in that kind of business product partners are brought in depending on you know what the conversation or the meeting is going to be about and so for example I could have a client where my since I'm in coverage my MB is covering let's say a particular client if that client is considering going public doing an IPO then my MD will bring in the ecn MD I saw by MD I mean managing director obviously and if that company is looking to acquire another company then Miami will bring in the M&A and B and then for example if they are looking to raise that then you know we bring in the leveraged finance Andy so depending on what they're trying to do different product partners would become involved but there's always the coverage banker that holds the ultimate relationship because the same client will use multiple products and different products over a period of time okay no this is extremely helpful so basically there's the coverage banker whose job is more to get the business through exists all relationships are going out and building relationships and their pending on whatever sort of the quote unquote project or problem is they bring in the product people who have expertise in various product areas yeah so for example at my level you know we're working with a client to buy another company to debt then you know my team will be working on both the part that is acquiring to the company and the part that is getting to the credit process to give them a loan and so for the credit process you know I would work with the lefthand team and then for the M&A process I've worked with the emanating and so sitting in coverage one of the benefits is that you get to see everything and be involved in all aspects and that's kind of why when I came it in the smacking I came into coverage yeah I know this sounds very interesting so then when you join supposed MB I'm guessing you join as an associate right so do you start to sort of choose whether coverage or a product area or whatever from the get-go or how does that work yeah it depends so it through the different at the analyst level and at the associate level mostly because the analyst level tends to be more structured and the associate level recruiting is more through networking and meeting people and so you kind of get to kind of learn more about what happens and position yourself at the endless level it's usually as far as I know the recruiting happens at the Forum level so you physically get an offer for the firm and they usually have a day where everyone kind of all the new hires people groups they want to be in and then the groups pick one analyst they want and then they get matched and then that sometimes happens to the associate level but also sometimes associates are just directly hired into a big group they've been interviewing for okay okay got it and the the coverage group which is the group that you're in are the relationships maintained with the client across all levels or you know is it more depending on your seniority yeah it is usually at several levels it can also depend from client to client generally the bigger because ient the more senior the relationship is going to be and so for example I've worked on M&A transaction for the best part of a year actually published for more than a year where ultimately you know working so closely with the client I build you know direct one-on-one relationships with the junior person at the finance team over there and pretty good working relationship with them and then also decent relationship not working one but you know more just in general this is you for the senior person and so there's always relationships at every level and the more demanding the project is the more exposure that you know people will have yeah yeah yeah you know I I'm very curious about how business is generated right so like for example what I've seen in consulting is that a lot of business just comes through existing relationships but let's say for example like you took the example of an M&A project so yeah does the company already have a company in mind that they're looking to acquire or you help them figure out okay these are the companies that might be good for you to consider yeah it really depends so I would say there's basically three categories that you can put it into there's existing relationships where you know a company may have a banker that they depend on and they use that banker or the most part the second would be where the company decides to do what's known as a big off where they invite six seven eight nine however many banks they want to come in present they pick you know one two three whichever ones they want and then the third is what I call ambulance-chasing it's basically you just you know go after companies cold call them and you know try to come into business and so I see all three happening I you know I've been in cases where one work because of existing relationships and and the client trusts trust and then I've seen cases where I've worked an IPO where we had no pre-existing relationship at all where you know the company never used bankers before and then we decided to go public they had a bake-off for the IPO and so we basically presented and won a role on that IPO and then the third is you know what is commonly known as pitching where you know you just go to companies and try to get in front of the decision-makers and try to win business from that yeah yeah and generally these relationships the relationships more with companies big companies let's say like like Amazon or Microsoft or Google who will typically be acquiring other companies or do you also have relationships with these smaller firms the so called unicorns well not necessarily unicorns but who might be good candidates for getting acquired yeah totally right so it's basically you have to basically try to pick them early so that you get in there early and then when they get bigger they remember that you know you were there for them when they were small yeah and kind of you know that's how the trust bills usually for so jack is kind of a very very different space from everything else it's just a it's just a whole different world out here and and the bigger tech companies like Google Amazon Apple they just have so much cash and such big themes that we have just capable of doing a lot of stuff on their own you don't even need you know external advisors many times part of the fact that you have so much cash means that they rarely ever trace that you never you know as well now does which is one of the rare ones but you know you rarely ever hear of Google going into the dead market story is dead and with the smaller companies so basically with a smaller company is usually the first stage that they would you know use investment banks is to get a line of credit basically like you get in your first credit card for a smaller company getting there for line of credit where you know they can borrow money against that credit line is you know the first step and so being able to get onto that credit line you know puts you in position for bigger things that are on there you know they sell themselves or go public and so you basically want to try and get in and have that relationship as early on as possible absolutely so how do you find these companies so it's obviously a mix of things it's basically you know you have to stay on top of the industry and know you know what are the companies out there and kind of have dialogues with you know with the people in those at those companies so when you say early stage in your parlance what is early stage so usually we are you know revenue generating usually in most industries they would also be profitable but in tech that's not necessary so usually at least generating revenue and growing and you know they have established businesses it also fluctuates from you know specific industries within tech for example semiconductor companies have a really really long product cycle you know so it may take up to a decade or a new semiconductor company to actually be on its own two feet and have a product that's out in the market and selling and so a novi stage software or Internet company might be something that's just two three years old growing in an insane - like an uber or a Facebook but an early-stage semiconductor company might be something that's you know almost a decade old so it depends a lot on you know what particular space you're talking right and and so this is where someone like you who's focused on the technology industry has to be aware of these nuances across these different verticals we didn't exact exactly and a lot of time tech groups are structured that way where you focus on particular verticals so analysts are usually generalist and sometimes junior associates can be general this as well but usually at higher levels bankers are focused on particular sectors so you know you would be focused on you'd be a semiconductor banker or you'd be internet media banker you'd be a software bankers would be communications bankers so as they go higher up generally the innocent makers tend to be focused on a niche sector within technology especially at the Bulge brackets and back there you know their experience and focuses all on that one sector yeah that makes sense okay yeah so I think it'll be really helpful if you can take an example of any project that maybe you have worked on you know without disclosing anything confidential and talk about what are the kind of things that you might work on during a project sure so we think what's a good project yeah most most of things I would do be the same on any project so you know I just speaking generically basically if I were to start right from the beginning assuming that you know we're still in mode you'd basically you know the initial thing would be putting together a book for initial meeting or a bake-off which can be a lot more intense you know if I give examples of bake-off where you're presenting look line to win a business it's usually one or two weeks of really grueling work we're putting together materials and for example I've had one bake-off where I had three all-nighters in a week three days out of that week I basically didn't go home oh do you have someplace to sleep in the office yeah so usually as the associate sometimes I'm just dozing off on a chair behind my handle this point is to Frank no way but sometimes I think the endless depending on the situation and and layout of the office can sometimes create makeshift beds or okay I've heard of and was having sleeping bags in the office big bag that's probably one of the reasons why they why a lot of Virginia bankers also try to live really close to office their office so that you can quickly escape for a quick nap and come back yeah all right so you had your three all-nighters in one week itself okay yeah yeah j st to give you an example of how intense the bake-off Envy because it's it's it's a real cram job it's basically like studying for finals the last week of the semester without having you know gone exhaust or done anything if we hit your one week to like give that give those finals and and pass the class and so I'm sure anyone would have gone through that experience in college and continued have fair experience here in banking yeah and so you know after that if you are lucky and you won then that's when you start actually working on the project if not then you just go on to the next one but assuming that you do win then usually have an initial organization meeting and usually if it's an M&A process it's only one bank so you would just you know basically it would be a lot more informal you'd be meeting with the client counterparts and starting off the work if it's an IPO you usually would have multiple banks and so you'd have an org meaning where all the banks and lawyers and the client get together and that's where you kind of hash out the timeline for the project and the responsibilities and the next steps in an IPO there's a lot of regulatory work that goes into it and so basically you kind of hash out the timeline and you know what what the key milestones are and when they need to be achieved by and those would be things like filing with the SEC having a financial model ready and then the bankers doing the art diligence you know once that all that's done then going out to investors to sell the company and so as the junior person you're usually a lot of to work you're doing it is preparing the materials for all these meetings and presentations and the financial model and things like that if it's an M&A project if you're representing the seller then you usually would set up a data room where you upload all the clients financials and documents so that other potential buyers can you know go through those things if you're on a buyers side then you'd be the person who's going into the data room pulling all the information building the model and coming up with the foundation for the valuation and in an M&A project there's no limit to what kind of analysis you can do it all depends on you know what you're seeing your banker wants to see you or what the client wants to see running all kinds of scenarios assuming they're making all kinds of different assumptions and and so there's a lot of financial modeling involved in that case and so yeah so you know that those processes can last anywhere from a couple months to more than one year it kind of you know just goes and usually you're working on more than one project at the same time so usually you'd be working on anywhere from two three to five six seven projects and then you kind of just have to juggle your time between those and prototype so things can get intense if you're working on too many things at once yeah so you so one single associate or an analyst can work on two three four five up till seven projects at a time oh yeah totally and it fluctuates a lot is usually so there's the concept of a Stamper and that's basically a mid-level banker a VP or director who's responsible for staff and an associates on different projects and yeah basically responsible for making sure that no one has too many things on the plate at the same time I see but you know it can happen where things just kind of blow up and you know things that were kind of dormant for a while somebody come back to go there and to give you an example in my first summer I was working on a Europe IPO and Hong Kong M&A deal and then I had my u.s. stuff going on over here and so just the nature of working on cross-border stuff and stuff outside of the US the time difference is I was basically working dog stuff because here the time difference created so that even at night while even if I was sleeping the work was actually still going on and I would have calls with Hong Kong at 11:00 p.m. on you know almost not the only basis but at least two three times a week and so pretty much never my day was never done before midnight just from that perspective and then working with people in Europe by the time I'm getting up at 7 a.m. they've already gone through half the our day and so by the time I gave at the office I have a whole inbox of emails already waiting for me and so it can get pretty intense you know just by such coincidences and working on international stuff as well yeah yeah I mean is this the reason you would say that investment bankers have such crazy eyes because you're working on so many things at the same time yeah there's not really one reason I think one of them is that they're working on too many it can also be inefficiencies that kind of create more work than that needs to be sometimes so that can play into it as well and I think I think the main reason is that it hasn't back is just really competitive and there's just so many banks vying for the same business that everyone is you know trying to put their best foot forward and so it becomes a demanding job just from the fact that you're trying to provide the best possible service and work to the clients it's an industry full of a type people so I perfectionists so yeah it definitely it's pretty demanding no absolutely and and the book that you mentioned that you prepare for the pitch generally how how big is it so it can depend it all depends on the senior banker and how you know what they are practice usually is but I'll say on average maybe like 20-30 pages I see okay yeah and I think that's the other interesting point that you brought up that a lot of the work that you do is really dependent on the senior banker who's driving it and so like that it's not the same thing that you can do over and over again exactly yeah I mean I you know if you're in and respect you'll see md's that go into meetings without any books and are very comfortable just talking and then you see others that you know rely a lot on actual materials and will you know want a lot of stuff on paper and so the junior experience can also be very different not only from bank to bank or team to team but simply between you know working for to difference in your banker oh yeah absolutely yeah yeah yes I think ours on this gives us a really good idea about just sort of life as an investment banker and what is now I think it'll be interesting if you can just tell us a little bit about you know on a day-to-day basis what are the kind of things that you would be sort of working or not working on but the kind of issues or problems that you might run into yeah I guess I would say the most stressful situations would be when clients have requests that are ASAP requests and you need to put stuff on the fly and you know do some quick back of the envelope map or in cases where you're working on a very hectic and in a transaction and you're getting close to a bidding date or you know you're running really intense models and you're just getting fired with questions left and right you know demeanor when this real quick and tell me what you get this one's is from that from five different people and you know you can only only one person can be in a file at one time making changes and you'd have like three people hovering on top of each other trying to work out with senior people who are clients on the phone you know demanding answers and so stress levels can get really high at times you just have to be capable of handling it and not taking things too personally or too close to your chest people can get stressed out and take it out on others and you have to be certain kind of person to be able to deal with that ya know this is this is very very helpful because I think the day to day life is what is ultimately that's what you have to deal with right as opposed to the high level problem which might sound very fancy from the outside yeah exactly I would say on a on a general level on the copper oxide day to day life is pretty slow unless you're actively in the middle of a very active deal but generally I would come in catch up on the news we you know whatever relevant articles or permission out there that is relevant to my CIS and then depending on you know whether there are any meetings that day I would attend those if not then whatever deliverables we have coming up in the next few days you know check in with the analysts where those things are going I would you know help them with any things they're stuck on help them with doing research reading financial statements industry reports and all this research and filling the information we need checking your work going through models make the show that the numbers are right going through the actual presentation materials to make sure everything is the way it's supposed to be and things like that so it's not you know super stressful and vanish I'm working on something that's super life then that's when it can get really stressful where you know you have things work going on at a much more fast pace yeah yeah yeah you know there is this perception in investment banking as an outsider that face time matters a lot is that true and you acquire your thoughts on this oh yeah that's a good question I think I think it's changing a lot it doesn't matter as much as it used to especially in the US and I think the industry has recognized that you know they're competing with tech and consulting in other industries that are trying in the chase the same Tower so it's definitely moving a lot but at the same time it's also you know just the nature of the industry where you've got really avoided to a whole extent and partly because the job of a senior banker is really to bring business and that means spending a lot of time with flights and so for example if I'm meaning sweet and we're working on materials for that my senior banker you know he may be traveling for a meeting and not get a chance to look at materials still later in the evening or not even next week let's say there is like you know meeting two days from now and he may not get a chance to look at something till sometime late afternoon and that means now he's you know got his comments to us around five o'clock six o'clock and we needed to run them at the next 24 hours and so you know you end up having a long day just by the nature of the business where you know you could have got stuff done much earlier but you know you just didn't hear you know didn't have a chance to get to it so that doesn't mean that you can just show up to the office at 5:00 p.m. you would still have to sit there all day and you know kind of do other things or read or do research or whatever usually you have other things to work on as well but you know if you don't then it doesn't mean you can just show up at 5:00 p.m. so I don't think there's a whole lot of where people are sitting around because they have to show their fears but there is definitely at the same time sitting around where you know you're just waiting to hear back from other people because they are busy with other things yeah yeah yeah yeah absolutely okay and just one more thing on this which is that you know lately investment banking has received a little bit of a bad rap in the media right that it is very stressful and all as to like so what are your thoughts on that you're in there in the technical things that was about it so it's it's really the kind of news you want to hear I mean it is what it is it's nothing that you know you can really do anything about I think ultimately you realize that you're in this job for particular reasons that doesn't really have much to do with you know what is happening with the industry overall and industries go through cycles when I was in undergrad early on that's when the whole alright before I went to undergrad that's what the whole Enron scandal broke out and took down after Anderson and accounting for I was warned a lot of trouble they eventually came out of it and I'm doing great now and still industries go through cycles technology had the same thing we had the dot-com bust and now it's the hardest thing ever so these fluctuations happen and you just have to be aware of that it doesn't hit us directly as much my day to day job I was nothing to do with you know a lot of these problems and so it's I guess it's bigger headache for higher up people who are actually running the bank as opposed to someone like me sitting in yeah yeah yeah alright so in your opinion what do you think are the most interesting aspects of working in investment banking okay the most interesting thing is first of all you get to cover a lot of different cool interesting companies and work with people at these companies and so you get a lot of exposure we get exposure to a lot of seniority that you wouldn't I think anywhere else there's very few places that you can you know be attending meetings with CEOs and board of directors right out of college or Business School and so you get a really good exposure right off the bat and then it's really dynamic job the stressful part is something that some people can't handle and then other people enjoy and I'll say I'm somewhere in between where you know if things are too slow then I get bored really fast so I kind of like having less off that intensity and then at the same time it's good balance between doing quantitive financial modeling and strategic advisory work and so kind of you know leveraging a lot of what we learn in business school yeah yeah yeah and I think you've touched a lot upon stuff that's challenging which is primarily sort of see the sort of last minute stressful situations that might crop up but is there anything that you just do not like about this space you asked me 10 years ago but things have changed a lot and and for the better so there's nothing really that I can think of that I don't like strongly I think I guess I the one thing is the unpredictability so the nature of the work me and and the fact that you know we are so dead to our clients means that things can come up very vandamm li and it's hard to plan around it and so I could have a vacation planned out three months from now and something could come up where you know I would have to cancel and change my plans I'd have no control over it so probably vacations but even weekends are kind of hard to plan around because you never know when word comes up it's not the kind of job where you know you can switch off and not be troubled by anyone you kind of always are expected to be accessible and available and so overall people are really understanding and try to make sure that everyone has you know a good work-life balance but at the same time things can come up and I think not being able to plan is only saying that it's kind of challenging yeah yeah yeah so are there any common mistakes that you've seen people often make in this road maybe when they're early on in their careers coming in for the wrong reasons will be the biggest mistake so what's the wrong reason yeah I think it's it's a very difficult job and it's not for everyone so I think it's really important it's one thing hearing about it but it's really important to vitiate visualize yourself doing it and especially as an analyst straight out of school your first year can be pretty brutal where you don't have much personal life and it pays rewards in the long term and you learn a lot but it's not for everyone and so you have to really enjoy spending a lot of time in Excel and doing modeling and doing research reading financial statements and so a lot of the things you hear witness making would be the calamitous change that MD used to you know traveling and meeting clients and all that kind of stuff but at the junior level especially at the analyst level a lot of hard work and so you have to come in with the right attitude I think it's not a hard job anyone can learn it and do well something longer than others but if you don't have a good attitude and if you're not coming in to the right reasons then you're going to struggle yeah ya know that that's actually very good advice and I'm guessing and internship is the best way to test the waters right yeah exactly that's definitely the best way although sometimes internships can be a little misleading because obviously the bank is in celle mode and they wanna you know get the best c ndidate and make sure they have a good experience but you can still observe you know how the full-timers and you know talk to them and get a feel for it so yeah there's no better way obviously that interning yeah and can you briefly touch upon the hierarchy in a typical investment bank yeah so there's basically analysts that are straight on undergrad then there is associates or the next level then there are PPS vice presidents and then directors and then finally managing directors or in the case of private farmers partners and the managing director is usually and the director is usually do most of the client real estate work and VP's and associates also do a lot of client facing but also on the actual execution and then the analyst I would say would be about 80% execution right and generally you know if you were to look at from analyst to an MD how long is that typical in terms of time it can be anywhere from 10 to 15 years usually okay so usually the base to be pu2 director is pretty standard and structured and then it's really the jump from BP to director and then director to MD that depend on you know how well you are doing and how how much you're making it right right right okay all right thanks a lot John so I just have some like last few questions to help people who who might be interested in exploring Investment Banking as a career so in your opinion what kind of person do you think would really thrive in this industry so it attracts a lot of a type people I don't think that's necessary I would say that you basically like I said have to have a really good attitude and you have to enjoy numbers especially as an analyst you have to enjoy spending a lot of time in Excel and PowerPoint and being humble and being able to do research and I think the soft skills and you know the the networking with clients and stuff that comes much later so for people who expect that early on wouldn't be the right place to come for people who are you know we're going to work hard it's a great place to go oh you said humble is that really true well well I see humble is because there's a lot of crappy work as well especially our generation I think straight out of school sometimes you know people can have wafted expectations in terms of what kind of work do the rest of banking or Lian see most drops out of business schools or beyond you're not working at a tech company you're not reading the next billion-dollar software so I think some people may want to do that and can do that but you know investing I think is a more traditional business where being at the bottom of the hierarchy you're kind of doing the kind of stuff that no one else wants to do and so you have to be willing to do that I think that's what the hue but he comes in it's more for traditional industry yeah no no that's a good point although yeah I've met many investment bankers who I won't really describe as being covered yeah and you know I think the networking piece is a really good point and do you think that you have to be more extroverted than introverted no I mean overall my overall philosophy in life I would say is that you can do well at anything no matter what whether you're introverted or extroverted so that wouldn't be specific to invest in thinking I think I don't think there's any job that you really need to be either one or the other you do have to be comfortable speaking in front of other people and presenting your ideas but honestly I mean I think you would have to have that skill set for anything coming out of business school it may take more effort for others for something others but I don't think being an introvert holds you back in any way yeah and the best investment bankers what do you see them do differently the best investors bankers I say are at the junior level I would say they take the extra effort to anticipate you know what what their senior is going to look for what they want and kind of manage upwards and whether it's being prepared with stuff before it's even asked for or doing work diligently and accurately and with few mistakes and at the senior level the best bankers are basically the ones you know that are able to win you know the most business from companies and that really comes down to building good relationships with the decision makers of the companies and being you know able to generate business and have a team that willing to work hard for them absolutely and so if someone is looking to learn more about this space or Islam is you know interviews are coming up are there any resources that you found helpful for budding investment bankers Google best resource for any questions you have yeah but on a serious note I would say a lot a few websites there's wall street overseas and then I think there's mergers and acquisitions I think those two are pretty popular websites for people looking to come in if you're in school if you're in business school then the Career Center is obviously the best resource usually in Latin making recruiting involves target schools where you know they would come on campus and recruit and so that makes life really easy if your school's not a target school then it really comes down to calling and networking and it's kind of playing the md role really early on when it's kind of just trying to get in touch with alumni who are in the industry and trying to set up time to talk to them and send a your resume and go in from there yeah so I say that's a great point and if you are in you know in a school where a bank is not coming in and you're cold calling how can you stand out because I'm sure there everyone is receiving a bunch of requests from many students yeah I would say the first thing is don't make mistakes you'll be surprised about how many careless mistakes you see even in emails and things like that what colleagues just typos and getting the time wrong or what time they call is supposed to be or things like that and I mean it's understandable that a lot of them are still you know barely 20 years old but I think if you want to stand out you want to show professionalism right off the bat and that helps a lot and then also showing real interest and being persistent I think people in this making and pretty much in any industry are obviously pretty busy people and so it's easy to get rejected when you're doing get responses but usually it's not because the person is ignoring you it's more likely because it was really busy and so I think being persistent stands out because that shows that you're really interested absolutely I don't think we need to get into business school recruiting because that is fairly structured so if someone is in Business School they can figure that out but yeah but do investment banks recruit from outside schools also yeah they do they do lateral recruiting it's generally from other banks and pretty tough to change careers without going to school but usually it's possible if you know you're just a year out of school I've seen it happen where you would basically come in as a first year analyst now you know be very ad hoc and dependent on kind of feel of just getting in touch with the bank's HR or networking with an alumni and dropping in your resume and trying to pull from there but it does happen occasionally it's not that common but it's not uncommon as well but but then you will start at the bottom if your yeah you really yeah I mean so analyst programs usually are two to three years and so you know if you've come out of school and done something else that's you know sort of related not very related it's not a big deal to we start at the bottom because nonetheless in two years or three years you'll be an associate anyway and given that if I smacking is so structured compared to maybe some other you know if you were to just school and work at you know for example GE corporate finance you know you're not can eat like three promotions in the next five years like you are in Investment Banking so even if you lose a year it's not really or in the long run too much yeah yeah that makes sense all right thanks a lot Jean this is really really helpful is there any other sort of parting advice that you'd like to share with the listeners ah no not really I mean I think I've advice I probably can but you know I think overall I would say you know always if you're recruiting and banking or anything else whoever you meet ask a lot of questions try to you know get a feel for the work environment I've always said this in a blitz backing the people you work with all your family then your real family who because you see them way more then you probably see anyone else it's it's really important to make sure that you know it's the right decision and you're going to the right place so always try to meet as many people as you can if you're recruiting and get to know them before you go there absolutely all right thanks a lot thank you for the time yeah take care bye bye so that was ours on on investment banking I really hope that you enjoyed today's discussion and found it helpful I for one definitely feel a little bit more intelligent today because I think I finally understand what investment bankers do I never did anyway I really hope you enjoyed today's discussion and of course if you have any questions at all for hours on offer me you can email us at learn educate discover at gmail.com and you can also tweet at us our twitter handle is at LED underscore curator you can also find us on facebook our facebook page is at facebook.com/ forward slash learn and educate discover and in fact if you like the page you'll start getting the updates on all the great content that we are putting together for you guys if you enjoy what we're doing you can simply subscribe to the show you can find us on iTunes or 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