Difference between IBD and Capital Markets?

The capital markets group basically helps firms go public or raise more capital. Banking is more advisory based in the sense that you tell them how to go about a certain acquisition etc. capital markets usually involves a lot of traveling, especially for DCM when you go on roadshows trying to raise capital. Banking has longer hours, DCM and ECM involve less modeling, ECM especially. For DCM, you do a lot of market updates for clients, pricing mechanisms for bonds, bond structuring as per client needs and order book allocation. As per bonuses and pay, they are very similar to banking, perhaps a slight bit more if you do more deals than the M&A group in senior levels, but your skill-set isn't as strong. Usually an attempt to raise capital never fails, so fee generation is pretty damn good. The fee is about 50 - 90bps based on deal size, deal type (144A/reg S) etc. You meet a lot of people, and you build very good contacts, possibly better than M&A since most of your investors tend to be hedge funds, asset managers, buy side/private equity and your issuers tend to be government organizations and corporations. People in DCM usually stay in their field but people who get bored of the job end up going to leveraged finance (which is pretty much dead now), trading desks or even banking. If you make strong contacts, you can also end up going to PE or a hedge fund.