**There are not many occupations as glamorous, stressful and misinterpreted as the one of an investment banker. The colloquial usage of the term wall street banker usually portrays them to be the sleek suiting billion dollar deal makers, who have to continuously work with less time and pressure and thereby impact their contributions to the global economy. So just what does a typical day of an investment banker consist of?
Working at all hours of the day (and sometimes night), investment bankers deal with clients, investigate market statistics, work on presentations, close transactions, and race around between half a dozen high-priority activities. It is a stressful career but to somebody who excels in a high-stress industry, it is very fulfilling.
In this blog we are going to take you day by day and find out something about the investment bankers’ work hours, explore the responsibilities of an investing analyst, and the burning questions like “Is being an investment banker hard?” or “How much does a banker make in a year?”
Table of Contents
- Morning: The Early Start
- Mid Morning
- Afternoon
- Evening
- Late Night
- What is an Investment Analyst
- Investment Analyst
- Skills you need
- How much do bankers earn
- Work-life Balance
- FAQs
- Conclusion
1. Morning: The Early Start
Time: 6: 30 AM 9:00 AM
It starts early since world finance is operated on a 24-hour clock. When New York wakes up the markets in Asia have already gone off and the markets in Europe are just beginning the day.
Morning daily routine:
Market Scanning: Reviewing overnight news from articles by Bloomberg, Reuters and other market sources to identify activities that could be affecting the deals that are on-going.
Email Catch-Up: Replying to the time-sensitive emails of the clients, these are mostly to the executives of various time zones.
News Summarization: Designing a morning brief back to the team on the latest in the market, industry activity and competitors.
Slide Deck Preparation: Updating pitch books for new financial- or customer requests of the following day.
Valuation Adjustments: Depression of financial models in case of overnight variations of market scenario.
Role of analyst here: morning usually entails the generation of rapid turnaround data packs to the vice presidents or managing directors who have client calls in the afternoon.
2. Mid Morning: Market Studies,Teleconferences and Business Conferences
Time:09.00 AM 12.00 PM
In the morning, offices are in full swing and meetings are commenced in the daily schedule.
Internal Deal Meetings: Discussing timelines, responsibilities, and risk factors for active transactions.
Client Check Ins: Reporting to CEOs, CFOs or corporate boards of the processes of the deal or a shift in the market.
Cooperation with Legal Departments: Uniformity in the domain of regulation filings, contracts and compliance.
Competitor Benchmarking: comparing the performance of the client with the other competitors in the industry as a way of indicating available opportunities.
Role of the analyst in this case:
- Preparing backing documentation to meetings, including valuation charts, financial models and snapshot summaries of dense market numbers.
- Making in-depth meeting notes that are frequently used as the guideline on follow up activities.
- Running what-if analysis for instance, what will happen to interest rates (increasing by 50 basis points).
3. Afternoon: Deal Execution and Financial Modelling
Times: 12 noon to 6 p.m.
This is the engine room of bankers work. It is usually in the afternoon, where sharp analytical work is done on live deals.
Financial Modeling: Build /optimize model i.e. DCF, CCA, Precedent Transaction.
Pitch Preparation: Slide Writing of the presentation which elaborates on the strategic and financial value-addition of a suggested deal.
Valuation Testing: Stress testing of varying financial assumptions to be ready to answer youngsters.
Preparedness: Development of money talks and facts on money with respect to negotiations.
Due Diligence Coordination: Liaising with lawyers, accountants, and auditors in order to confirm everything in the deal.
Analysts Roles in this:
- Outlining the charts, graphs and industry trend lines in the client decks.
- Keeping big spreadsheets in excel with several thousands of data.
- Comparing financial figures across many sources in order to avoid making mistakes.
- Conducting due diligence on the macroeconomic factors which may impact a transaction e.g. currency fluctuations in the case of cross border acquisitions.
- Plotting of charts, graphs and industry trend lines during the client decks.
4. Evening: Client Deliverables and Cross-Time-Zone Coordination
T.I.M.E. 6 pm 10 pm
Investment banking evenings do not tend to be silent. This is the time when a number of global customers are only beginning their working day.
Final Presentations: Applying last minute amendment by senior bankers, or the clients.
In-Market Adjustments: Revaluation/Trends of the valuation or forecasts at the point of time based on the new information in the markets.
Calling the Clients in Other Time Zones: Speaking with Asia-Pacific or European customers in an overlapping working day and the evening in the U.S.
Team Reviews: Generating huddles after the evening to appease during the night time.
Role of the analyst is:
- Re-running of the models after the assessment of the senior team.
- This is done by rechecking the numbers and presentation in the PowerPoint slides, this is important because the materials might go directly to senior decision-makers.
- Pulling in other research can be done in case new competitive threats or opportunities emerge during the deal.
5. Late Night: Wrapping up and Planning Ahead
Times: 10PM 2 AM( or more )
Depending on how late a “short” day ends, sometime before midnight; deal season may extend the working hours well into the early morning.
Daily Report Summary: Sending internal reports of a summary of what has been done, what remains to be done and what is next.
Prepping the next day Agenda: It is done to have materials ready for morning calls.
Incorporated Client Feedbacks: Unnecessary modifications of files at the end of the day in preparation to submit it to the clients on the next day.
Analyst contributions:
- Remaining after to do specific tasks such as reconciliations, format or print physical pitch materials in case they are required.
- Calculations before the document goes out, triple-checking calculations, one error can kill the credibility of the documents.
6. What is an Investment Analyst?
Investment analyst is the junior job of most investment banking units. The secret to the functioning is people who crunch the numbers, prepare the financial models and develop the pitch material analysts. They have close liaisons with other associates and vice presidents to see that deals have smooth operations.
7. Investment Analyst: Core of the division
The junior but important job in an investment bank is called the investment analyst. Analysts might not be the point people during client meetings but they have assigned the workload behind it and are the ones doing the heavy technical and research work.
Key responsibilities:
Data Gathering: Availing data that was found in financial databases, industry reports and company filing data.
Financial Modeling: Designing the creation and maintenance of the excel templates to forecast the performance of the company.
Pitch Book Creation: Creation of power points piggybacking charts, market profiles and transaction formats.
Market Research: Tracking the market trends and regulations, competitors approach to get significant insights to the clients.
Scenario Analysis: Examining testing the ability of changes in the interest rates, commodity prices or foreign exchange rates to have an effect on deals.
Support Role: Assisting associates and vice presidents with ad-hoc tasks, from research requests to formatting presentations.
Quality Control: Giving accuracy, consistency and professionalism of all materials before they get to clients.
Why it matters: The groundwork by the analyst would ensure that the senior bankers would not have the data-driven grounds to negotiate billion-dollar deals.
8. Skills You Need to Succeed
Being an investment banker does not only mean being financially literate; it is surviving in a pressurized environment.
Core skills:
Analysis skill: Creation and interpretation of the financial data into models.
Communication arts: expressing to the people how to get to consumers via complex designs.
Resilience: The capacity to put in so many hours a week
Granularity: Preventing mistakes prior to sending to the customer.
Adaptiveness-Trenched in the road of the turning market.
These are also essential to an investment analyst who as a rule tends to be the first to notice potential problems with a model or a presentation.
9. How much do investment bankers make in a year?
It is a huge attraction with regard to money. Other positions such as entry-level analysts in the best U.S. banks could get a salary of USD 150,000-250,000 as base and as bonus. The associates and vice presidents are paid more, although in good years managing directors can earn up to millions of dollars.
The investigation on how much banker earns annually, will be dependent on:
Seniority: The managing directors obtain less as compared to the analysts.
Location: Wall Street bankers are reported to be paid frequently at higher rates as compared to the regional ones.
Amount of deals: The more deals the more bonuses.
10. Work-Life Balance: The Fact
Investment bank hours ( 80 -100 per week) leave little room for personal time. The financial institutions on their part have instituted certain restrictions on working during weekends in order to regain their morale but ultimately the needs of clients can override this.
Are investment bankers happy?
It depends. A lot of people like the quick turnaround and putting their minds to work, and financial gain. Some simply cannot afford to have no down time.
11. FAQs
1. What do investment bankers do?
They give advice to companies on mergers, acquisitions, IPOs and raising capital besides carrying a market assessment and valuation.
2. Is being an investment banker hard?
Yes. It becomes one of the most demanding professions because of working long hours, coupled with high expectations and complicated deals.
3. How much time investment banking really takes in a week?
Sometimes as much as 80-100 hours every week, but there are efforts made by some companies to decrease that.
4. Do they love their IB job?
It varies. There are those who love the adrenaline and career growth and there are those who burn out because of workload.
5. What do these bank elites make in a year? Analysts are paid 150K to 250K with managing directors getting millions based on performance.
6. What do bankers do differently from other finance professionals?
They focus heavily on execution of deals, advising clients and capital raising, rather than just asset management.
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