IB and Religion - Can I work in a pure m&a role?

This is BS and you’re the people that spread misinformation. You’re not sitting there paying interest or anything or that nature. You’re literally an advisor to companies, and are getting a paid a fee for that advice.

Some companies have an Islamic finance team. I know Rothschild does, but obviously the team will be in the ME prolly

https://www.rothschildandco.com/en/global-advisory/debt-advisory-and-re…

Scroll down and you'll see it. 

I kind of depends on how you define “financing”. They don’t actually lend money, but they will absolutely be a part of the process of arranging financing (i.e. on the buy-side they will be closely involved with the LevFin banks that are issuing the debt in coordination with the acquisition)

First of all, sorry you're getting so much MS on here for your religion

Secondly, M&A/coverage role at a BB vs EB is really the same when it comes to this. You will set up 95% of the deal in-house, and the actual debt issuance is done through a DCM team, but you as the advisory team have to coordinate that with the client and whoever is issuing the debt. This is true whether you're at a BB in-house or an EB. If you're thinking at a Q/CVP you will never touch any debt financing and that all just disappears off to a BB, that's not correct. Your bank just won't be issuing it but you will have pretty much equal involvement.

Other ideas - consulting, valuations role? 

So if you can’t do financing based on debt… I assume you’re forbidden to purchase a house that isn’t all cash?

Very curious.

Companies raising debt is very different from lending to individuals, which is forbidden. But I would avoid finance/business if that is an issue for you. There's no way to avoid it.

And so we have Goldman Sachs

It actually is your job to question the rules of your religion. If you aren't questioning all of the teachings of Islam, then how can you truly understand your supposed faith? If you don't really understand what you are supposedly believing in, then you can not call yourself a true believer. I'm not saying that your interpretation is wrong or right, but as the above poster suggests, religion is often a lot more nuanced than it is black-and-white, even among the main 3 religions in the western world (and especially in Islam, given the wide variety of interpretations of most teachings there are across the different schools). I would suggest you actually heavily question this "law" and research the context behind this teaching and talk to many people with varying views of this within the Islamic faith. This will be a helpful exercise that will aid in actually deepening, refining, and developing more conviction in your faith, rather than just being a "blind follower."

firstly, it is not my role or your role to question the rules my religion requires me to follow. 

I've heard this too many times in my life (coming from a religious background), and I will never listen to this. I will always question doctrines, study the historical context, and analyze "both sides". 

To answer your questions more specifically:

I would suggest you avoid finance entirely if you're adamant against debt.

1) M&A transactions or any business transaction for that matter requires capital outlay. Businesses want adequate liquidity and cash on hand, so even if they could, they're almost certainly never going to pay for an acquisition fully in cash. I've already told you why equity financing isn't preferred so the chances of every deal you work on being purely equity financed is virtually 0. Even if your boutique isn't explicitly doing cap raises, another bank will be doing it on the exact same deal which seems to violate what you've laid out in the OP

2) Save aggressively. Work in a extremely LCOL area.

Based on that definition you can probably get away as high up on the cap structure as PIK loans. PIK = pay in kind (or pejoratively, pay if you can). It’s a loan where the deemed interest accretes over the loan amount - effectively increasing the principal value - and is payable at maturity, generally. I don’t know of a group that only does PIK loans as it’s a niche product. Usually it’s lumped together with teams that do mezzanine financing, which also includes loans with both cash and PIK interest. Honestly man, just go to ECM ffs.

Ok, to answer your question succinctly, there is no investment banking role that does not have any involvement with the creation of debt instruments, apart from ECM (which you yourself excluded because they sometimes underwrite convertibles).

If you’re genuinely serious about this, maybe ER (you’ll still get to follow/comment on/call for M&A transactions). By your standards, there is no transactional work that you can reasonably do without having any involvement whatsoever in the issuance of debt.

I can't think of a single muslim billionare who follows islamic rules. you seem naive

i believe the quran mentions this in the third chapter, that working for centerview/evercore/ftp is not forbidden. it also says working for tobin&co will take you to heaven.

They may not underwrite the debt themselves, but they will be closely involved with arranging the financing (i.e. they will be on calls with LevFin teams, reviewing credit documents, providing recommendations on various debt alternatives to their clients, and increasingly even calling up direct lenders and undertaking the debt financing process themselves).

The problem is that your  recommendation as a consultant might include the business taking on debt for implementation of some long term strategy (ex. a completely new central software system, investments in manufacturing and PP&E, etc., or even proposed acquisition) and that will factor into your analysis and proposed recommendation.