Average Age of Managing Director Promotion
Does anybody know the average age of bankers when they are promoted to Managing Director?
I'm guessing 31 at earliest, usually around 33 or 34.
What is your guess?
Investment Banking Managing Director Age for Promotion
Our users shared that the average age to become an MD is in the mid-30s - 40s. However, our users pointed out that "rock-star" employees can be promoted quickly through the system especially in more meritocracy based divisions like trading.
From 30 to 35 is considered a young promotion to MD. 36 - 40+ is about the norm.
31-32 is certainly possible: this is an ideal situation, but assume age 22 out of college, then 3 years as an analyst and 3 years as an associate to get to 28 as VP. add 3 more years to that and you get a 31ish MD. Certainly rare, but not unheard of.
I think it happens a lot faster in trading. I met a lot of desk heads between 26 and 28 (currently "directors") on track to make MD easily before 30.
For businesses like investment banking – success is based on your ability to bring in business and source deals. In order to do this, you need to build relationships which takes a great deal of time. On top of that – MDs need to be old enough that CEOs, CFOs, and Boards will respect you. Therefore, regardless of your level of skill, it will take time to achieve the level of MD.
You need clients in banking and clients are CFOs/CEO's and MD's of PE funds. They are all older and usually only retain older/wiser bankers.I think that a banker can spend 2 yrs as an analyst, 2 yrs @ associate and 2 yrs @ vice president and be a fine MD (intellectually) at 28. Capability is secondary to rain-making ability when the MD promote is contemplated and rain-making ability is entirely dependent on building client relationships throughout your decade+ of service.
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33 or 34 would be an EXTREMELY young MD
31 is unheard of
31-32 is certainly possible: this is an ideal situation, but assume age 22 out of college, then 3 years as an analyst and 3 years as an associate to get to 28 as VP. add 3 more years to that and you get a 31ish MD. certainly rare, but not unheard.
Are you sure i have heard of some real younf MD's they are a special case. A few GS guys now they run HF's.
I think Mid thirties is the avg age to become a MD.
The earliest age I personally know someone making MD is 37. This was someone who was a real star, but did bow out two years for business school, which arguably probably didn't slow the overall progression.
you make director, before you make MD.so you can become Director around 33, but an MD will take at least several more years
From 30 to 35 is considered a young promotion to MD. 36 - 40+ is about the norm.
Boaz Weinstein, at the young age of 32, oversees all of Credit Trading in North American and Europe for DB. I am sure he made MD a few years ago. I think it happens a lot faster in trading. I met a lot of desk heads between 26 and 28 (currently "directors") on track to make MD easily before 30. I am not sure what is early for bankers.
trading is a totally different beast. You need Clients in banking and clients are CFOs/CEO's and MD's of PE funds. They are all older and usually only retain older/wiser bankers.
Thats my opinion anyway...I think that a banker can spend 2 yrs as an analyst, 2 yrs @ Assoc. and 2 yrs @ VP and be a fine MD (intellectually) at 28. He just won't be able to bring in the biz. Banks like to reserve that Baller "MD" title for the big swinging dicks that bring in Millions to the firm. Capability is secondary to rain-making ability when the MD promote is contemplated...and rain-making ability is entirely dependent on buidling client relationships trhoughout your decade+ of service...
you can be an MD at 29 if you're stud.
Eric Mindich, founder of Eton Park, made MD at Goldman at age of 28 (may even have been PMD, but not sure).
On the banking side, Schwarzman made MD at 31 at Lehman.
Overall, have to agree 34+ is the norm
Martin Siegel at Kidder Peabody was sitting on the Board by 29 and was MD and Head of M&A. That was in the 80s, however.
Normal age is mid-late 30s - 40s.
All the people who have hit MD in their late 20s have gone on to be ridiculously successful.
Shwarzman is soon to be (he probably already is) a billionaire thanks to Blackstone IPO.
Eric Mindich is sitting in a pool of money.
Pretty much if you can hit MD in your late 20s chances are your going to end up with a net worth of at least 9 figures.
but if you're looking for 11+ figure net worth (i.e. $10billion+), you're better off starting your own company sometime before the age of thirty. Buffett was on his own by twenty five I think, and Lampert (who is widely seen as the next Buffett), was off on his own by twenty six or so. No need slaving away for the man when you got the goods to make it on your own....
I read some article today on a Chicago based hedge fund bazillionaire. He started I forgot what but is 38 years old, worth $2 billion and just bought art for $60 million from mogul David Geffen.
Ken Griffin - Started Citadel
honestly, who cares if you are worth 100 mil or 1 bil. I don't think that there is anything more I would like to buy past a certain point. In all honesty, if I were to ever hit a net worth, from which I can maintain my lifestyle and that of my family, I will keep working but start dumping half or more of everythign I make to military charities.
After a point your right. Once your a billionaire, you can only think of so much stuff to buy before you realize its tough to spend all your money.
is just a way to keep score. you're right, $100 million vs. $1 billion doesnt matter from a lifestyle perspective (well, unless you're looking to purchase a sports team or something), but it does matter in terms of your ranking relative to your peers. i'm all for giving money to charity, but i prefer the Buffett approach - i.e. make a shitload of money and climb the forbes rankings, then once everyone knows you're the best investor ever, give it all away....
Schwartzman is already a billionaire nvm the ipo. And i'm pretty sure that once you have a couple hundred million or billion, you have the comfort of knowing that when you walk into a room your going to be the richest guy there. So there's no point going past a certain point.
Sammy your absolutely correct. If you worth $400 million and the guy next to you is worth $1 billion the difference is all shits and giggles. There is a 99.99999999% chance that you are richer than everyone at a party, restaurant or wherever it is that you go.
guys don't really understand the industry. obviously you're more than likely to be the wealthiest person wherever you go if you're worth $400 million. but why, then, doesn't everyone just quit working and move to the bahamas once they hit a certain money threashold? it's the competition. that's why donald trump complains that forbes misvalues his wealth, or why private equity manager X continues to work eighty hours week to put deals together when he's sixty years old. it's all about keeping score.
Plus a $100 Million Net Worth won't buy you a fully loaded Boeing 747 like the one the Russian Billionaire flies in. Honesly, in life, you can never have too much money or too much pussy.
Do you really want the upkeep of a 747 though? I'd personally be happy with a small little learjet or a gulfstream V or something...not the obscene 767 that the founder of Google has.
Screw the loaded 767, give me a Gulfstream V any day over that.
People seemed to have overlooked the fact that if you do so well as to become a multi millionare at that level you are most probably a workaholic who would go crazy sitting on a beach for more than two days.
MD doesn't mean nearly as much in S&T as it does in Banking. I met a director who was 28 and making $2mm per year, head of his desk. MD is not the be all end all in trading.
MD Promotion Age (Originally Posted: 04/28/2014)
Hey,
I've gathered that the IB track is Analyst > Associate > VP > ED > MD after undergrad. It seems that bankers spend about three years in each position before being promoted and so this would work out to Bankers spending about 12-14 years in the industry before being promoted to MD. This works out to their age being about 32-36. However, it seems that in reality that's considered a very young age for an MD and most bankers become MD's in their late 30's to early 40's.
So, I feel that I'm missing something which is giving me the illusion that it's possible to be promoted at a younger age and I'd like to ask what that is.
Thanks for reading.
CM
You can easily spend 4 years as a VP and 4-5 as a director if you're not originating any new business for the firm. Normally, banks will fire you if you can't make MD after spending several years as a ED/Director though.
Also, keep in mind that plenty of people spend 2 years getting their MBA, and many MD's didn't start off their careers in banking.
Yeah, it can't be stressed enough that you don't just show up with a Harvard MBA and 10 years of investment banking experience to become an MD. You have to bring in business. It's really that simple. If you bring in good business then it will make financial sense for you to become an MD. If you don't then GTFO.
The majority of MDs at most banks came in as associates out of business school, so while direct promote associates may be 25 in A1, their business school counterparts will more than likely be around 30.
As in a 30 year old associate?
The path up to VP level is largely about your ability to execute ie get deals done.
At VP, you're expected to support a director bring in business and increasingly bring in business yourself.
The skillset on this path is very discontinuous. A kick-ass executor can (and often is) no good at bringing in new business. That sort of person gets stuck at VP level and can usually only advance by moving to a non-client facing area where execution and analysis count more than bringing in new business (eg credit analysis or some area where you can enable a lot of business by being the house-geek on a particular area eg interactions with ratings agencies for a DCM banker).
My experience of IBs is that they provide very little training to make this transition and will (sometimes very actively) keep a good execution VP busy in execution work, giving neither the support or the time to that VP necessary for the VP to build up relationships. So the VP find him/herself stuck doing execution, unable to start bringing in much business.
A lot of directors keep their relationships to themselves and why wouldn't they? Their monopoly on those relationships and the access to deals it gives them defines their value to the IB. Provide a VP with access to your clients and your VP may jump ship and starting poaching fee opportunities that should have been yours.
This may look like arsehole behaviour by a director when you're a VP. It looks completely against the interest of the firm. But it's completely rational for a director given the way IBs work. After all, if the director isn't bringing in deals, he's not getting a bonus and he'll probably be fired.
A director is looking after his/her franchise, not the franchise of the IB that happens to be his/her employer at the time. Even if the director has worked for the same IB for years, he/she has seen enough people get fired to know that life in an IB can be short.
It just means that, at the VP level and above, an IB can often be an unpleasant place to work for reasons completely different to the challenges and frustrations experienced by sub-VP staff.
And few in an IB will even bother to explain this discontinuous trajectory to you.
This industry is fucked, everything is being commoditized, don't even waste your time. If you haven't made it by 33, just peace out and do something you actually like. There are no meaningful 'senior partners' in the sell side anymore, it's a McJob
wake the fuck up
Can you explain your view? Characterizing investment banking as a McJob seems like an overextended hyperbole.
I get that Dodd-Frank and Basel III have made the sell side a little bit less interesting, but I don't see analyst jobs being outsourced to sweat shops in Vietnam.
Finance now is like law in the late 90's, it's jumped the shark and every fucking dope on earth is trying to be a "BSD". Do your two years and bounce the hell out to more worthwhile shit. If you want objective data points and a documented exigesis of opinion....turn on the fucking news and wake up already. If you want an above average salery, go into finance. If you want to run a business unit, don't.
That's all I have to say.
Do you mean move to the buy side or just completely leave finance altogether and go to something like VC or corporate?
To the OP, like everyone else has said, it's about the business you bring in. Look at the Forbes Top 30 under 30 and you will find MD's at top banks who were 27 or 28 at the time of promotion (maybe one girl was 26?). It has very little to do with age.
As a side-note, I heard/read that those lists are self-nominated...deflates the accomplishment somewhat.
You do realize sell-side has no skin in the game? This means that as long as you're a good "broker", you can succeed (not necessarily making the right calls, etc)
You can do it in under 20 GOOD years. Keyword good. A promotion every 3 years is in the case that you can perform really well and bring in enough for a promotion from a VP. The promotion from a VP is pretty huge and not like a simple promo out of an analyst or associate program. At least from what I've seen. I think that the promotion from higher ranks is a lot longer than at lower ones.
good point
Also should note a lot of the GS MDs you see at 26/27 etc are in S&T rather than IB...however I've heard/read of a few IB bankers becoming MDs in their late 20s - would be interesting to know what they did/to hear about their background.
Thanks a lot for the help guys! As a follow on question, I was thinking about becoming an Army officer for 3 or 4 years after my time as an analyst and so, considering the long time line from Analyst to (hopefully) MD, would that effect my progression by slowing me down in IB? Or the sell side for that matter.
Others, correct me if I'm wrong, but I do think that it's difficult to get hired as a former military person to the analyst position because the analyst position is what one might call a "bitch position". I get the impression that hiring managers aren't super interested in hiring at the analyst position the former military guys who are usually older than their peers.
I do think that post-MBA recruiting is solid for IBD recruiting for former military guys. There are a ton of former military on Wall Street in general.
I've personally never heard of someone going high school ---> college ---> IBD analyst ---> military ---> IBD associate. I'm thinking you'd probably do analyst stint then military then MBA then post-MBA IBD associate, at which point you'd be around 30 or 31. The military wouldn't delay you beyond your 4 years but I don't think it would necessarily accelerate your career. The GI bill would pay for your MBA, which would be nice and top MBA programs love ex-military, so it would probably substantially help your chances of admission to an MBA business schools ">M7 school.
Alright, cool. That's something to consider. Is an MBA considered necessary to advance in banking, by the way?
It's not required like a JD/MD/CPA is required to practice in those fields, but I would say the statistical majority of persons at higher levels of finance--PE, IB, VC, etc.--end up with an MBA or a related masters degree.
Just always network. If you are well connected you will a) make to MD or b) get screwed, not not care because you are well connected and can find another job easily.
This is probably the benefit of going a B school associate vs. Analyst>>Associate. Start building your network now and never stop.
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