M&A Analyst AMA

Hey dude, what kind of work experience would you recommend that would be advantageous?

Work experience in investment banking and A Level insight days can be useful if you're a sixth former.
Spring week internships if you're a first year student.
Summer internships are a must when you're in your penultimate year.

Okay thanks. And what is networking? I have no family links so how can I network?

Networking involves building friendships with people in banking. This can help you in three ways:
1) Your network can provide you with advice on how to succeed in the application process, such as interview questions and how to do well during an internship.
2) You will find out more about the career by speaking to people you know that will give you an honest view of the work they do, not a glorified one or a dark one. This will help you decide whether banking is really for you.
3) You could ask people in your network to provide you with certain opportunities like work shadowing or recommendations to HR, but this is not something you should count on.

Networking opportunities will come if you join your university's finance or investment society. Banks hold networking events at target universities so you can meet bankers and build friendships with them.

Awesome, thanks for the info i will save it for future reference.

If you didnt get into M&A what would your other options have been?

It would have been to go into audit at KPMG, Deloitte, PWC or EY, get my ACA, and then move into M&A at a bank.

Oh interesting, even as a cambridge grad?

Do jobs like AM pay well too?

How bad are the hours for a junior, are they as bad as people say?

How bad are the hours for a junior, are they as bad as people say?

I wouldn't characterise long hours as bad. Part of the attraction of investment banking is how much you learn in just a few years. This happens because you work long hours on important deals. If you worked in a normal 9-5 job, you wouldn't learn even half as much about business and finance as you would in investment banking.

In terms of hours, I work around 80-90 hours a week. Sometimes it goes down to about 70, and sometimes 100+. It's definitely a manageable workload once you get used to it and you do learn an incredible amount through this experience.

I wouldn't characterise long hours as bad. Part of the attraction of investment banking is how much you learn in just a few years. This happens because you work long hours on important deals. If you worked in a normal 9-5 job, you wouldn't learn even half as much about business and finance as you would in investment banking.

In terms of hours, I work around 80-90 hours a week. Sometimes it goes down to about 70, and sometimes 100+. It's definitely a manageable workload once you get used to it and you do learn an incredible amount through this experience.

Do you think IB advisory functions may become obsolete over next 15 years as a result of developments in Blockchain, Fintech etc? Personally enjoy financial modelling/valuations and I would look to know the perspective of someone in industry as to where this may be heading in the future...

Do you think IB advisory functions may become obsolete over next 15 years as a result of developments in Blockchain, Fintech etc? Personally enjoy financial modelling/valuations and I would look to know the perspective of someone in industry as to where this may be heading in the future...

I'm not the OP, but it's impossible to replace IB advisory functions with technology. The investment banking division provides advice to companies on acquiring new companies or listing stocks and bonds on the stock market. This involves a heck of a lot of communication to investors and in between companies. It's by definition a human business. Block chain and fin tech might reduce hiring in the trading business but not in IB since it's mainly pitching to clients, building relationship and attempting to attract more deal flow. Only humans can do that.

Financial modelling and valuations also have to be done by humans because data has to be gathered from different fields and it's complicated. IBD is one of the jobs least likely to be automated, if they get automated then 80% of other jobs will be as well.

Just to add something to this, I met the former Barclays CEO Antony Jenkins at a conference last year. He works in the FinTech space now and I asked him about this. And I agree mostly with your points.

However, there is technology/artificial intelligence on the way that can effectively gather and consolidate data from various sources including financial statements, and input it into Excel models/perform calculations and also write reports around the data. He said to me when he first saw it he was absolutely stunned. And if you actually consider this is one of the most time consuming parts of the job for an IBD Analyst, it will at least marginally reduce hiring needs.

Posted from TSR Mobile

Do you think IB advisory functions may become obsolete over next 15 years as a result of developments in Blockchain, Fintech etc? Personally enjoy financial modelling/valuations and I would look to know the perspective of someone in industry as to where this may be heading in the future...

Just to add something to this, I met the former Barclays CEO Antony Jenkins at a conference last year. He works in the FinTech space now and I asked him about this. And I agree mostly with your points.

However, there is technology/artificial intelligence on the way that can effectively gather and consolidate data from various sources including financial statements, and input it into Excel models/perform calculations and also write reports around the data. He said to me when he first saw it he was absolutely stunned. And if you actually consider this is one of the most time consuming parts of the job for an IBD Analyst, it will at least marginally reduce hiring needs.

Posted from TSR Mobile