Investment Banking:

Sell-side vs Buy-side

Sell-side (Investment Banking) helps companies/governments raise capital by selling securities to Buy-side (Asset Management)

Underwriting

Capital raising and underwriting groups work between investors and companies that want to raise money or go public via the IPO process. This function serves the primary market or new capital .

Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A)

Advisory roles for both buyers and sellers of businesses, managing the M&A process start to finish.

Sales & Trading

Matching up buyers and sellers of securities in the secondary market. Sales and trading groups in investment banking act as agents for clients and also can trade the firms own capital.

Equity Research

The equity research group research, or coverage , of securities helps investors make investment decisions and supports trading of stocks.

Asset Management

Managing investments for a wide range of investors including institutions and individuals, across a wide range of investment styles.

Investment Banking:

Skill-sets required for Investment Banking

Getting into Investment Banking is not easy and involves a conversion ratio of only 10-20% depending upon job profile. Skillsets needed for Investment Banking are multi-fold and multi-disciplinary in nature.

Work Activities

Investment Banking Analysts are typically recent college graduates or individuals who may have some financial industry work experience, but who are new to investment banking.

Analysts (and later associates) generally split the "grunt" work of investment banking doing basic research and producing endless reports that are typically sent back down by vice presidents or directors for endless revisions. They are also responsible for putting together what are called "pitch books".

An investment banking pitch book is pretty much what it sounds like; a "book" (i.e., lengthy report or presentation) designed to pitch the bank's services to new or existing clients. Pitch books are used by directors or managing directors as handy reference guides and visual aids when making sales pitches to clients.

For example, a pitch book for a proposed IPO basically attempts to lay out how the bank will help the company considering the IPO to realize more money than it could ever have imagined possible. To buttress the bank's argument, a pitch book will often recount how successfully it handled the IPO of a similar company. However, just to cover its bases and avoid unrealistic expectations, the pitch book will also present numerous scenarios of various possible outcomes for the IPO, courtesy of numerous projections run by analysts or associates.

An analyst's day is typically occupied with doing research and writing reports. Investment banking analysts usually become world-class experts at generating spreadsheets in Excel. They are also often responsible for handling their supervisors schedules and fielding phone calls from clients.

In addition, analysts also generate solid discounted cash flow (DCF) valuations of companies, arrange meetings with clients, price new offerings, and produce (with the help of analysts doing all the hard work) weekly newsletters.

Typical day in the life of an Investment Banking Analyst

Each day in your life as an Investment Banking Analyst is different, but an average day might look like this:

9 AM - 12 PM: Arrive at the office, update a status report on potential buyers in an M&A deal, send it out, and join an update call with the client's management team. The senior bankers do most of the talking, so you work on a pitch book for a different, potential deal in the background.

12 PM - 3 PM: You join a few "due diligence calls" for another deal, where the potential buyer asks customers of the seller questions about why they use its products and services. You're just there to monitor the calls and make sure the potential buyer doesn't go too far with its questioning. After that, you run to Starbucks with a few Analysts for a quick break.

3 PM - 5 PM: There's a huge incident as a traveling Managing Director requests briefing materials for an upcoming pitch ASAP, and you have to scramble around to find and send hundreds of pages of reading.

5 PM - 7 PM: Your Associate comes over to review the Confidential Information Memorandum (CIM) for the client from this morning, and you start making his changes to the financial summary and market sections.

7 PM - 10 PM: As one of the VPs is leaving the office, he decides that the team needs to re-do a pitch book for an upcoming initial public offering (IPO), and he wants to see the new draft by tomorrow morning.

You start coordinating with the Equity Capital Markets (ECM) team to get market updates and case studies.

10 PM - 1 AM: The Associate signs off on the new qualitative slides in this draft of the pitch book, and he leaves the office. You continue to tweak the valuation and Excel-based parts.

1 AM - 2 AM: Another Analyst at the office is having a major problem with a complicated Excel model not working, so you decide to stay another hour to help out, and then you go home.

Factors that create "bad days" include:

Multiple Live Deals: If you're on 3-4 deals that are all active at the same time, the workload is unpredictable, and you could get streams of requests throughout the day.

Big Upcoming Pitches: Since pitches have hard deadlines and bankers like to do unnecessary work, you could easily end up staying late or even pulling an all-nighter to finish a long and detailed pitch book.

Last-Minute Emergencies: For example, if a traveling MD suddenly needs information for a meeting taking place in 1-2 hours, be prepared to scramble.

PROGRAM REQUIREMENTS

There are no pre-requisite qualifications for the course. We will be sharing pre-program content and videos that you can go through to help you better prepare for the program.

Participants from varied backgrounds such as Commerce, Management, Statistics, Finance, Financial Markets and other related fields will do well in the program. We require our participants to have a Graduate degree with minimum 50% pass percentage.

PURSUE THE PROGRAM

This program is carefully designed and curated for anyone who wants to improve his/her understanding of Investment Banking and Global Markets and those who want to become an Investment Banking Analyst.

This course is aimed at those with a solid financial background who wish to explore the advanced aspects of Investment Banking and Global Markets, financial modelling and valuation methodologies, including:

NANEDEGREE TRACKS

Equity Research

NANODEGREE

Investment Banking Analyst

NANODEGREE

Trading Analyst

NANODEGREE