Investment Banking Club
Hey, I'll be interning in IBD in London this summer. Coming from a non-target in the UK, our university doesn't have any sort of Investment Banking Club, or otherwise, that would encourage students to think of IBanking as a realistic career choice.
For those of you that have been a part of IB Clubs, or run an IB Club for that matter, what kind of things do you do? Do you sit around discussing recent M&A? Do you get in speakers from IBanks? Can you organise informational sessions at IBank offices? I'm thinking I could start some sort of club to help people....so has anybody found such a club helpful. I'm not expecting membership in the club to help on the EC front at all, but it could be a source of information/inspiration for students from a non-target such as mine to considering IBanking as a career.
Any comments very welcome.
At UT we basically spend the first half of the meeting discussing socials/plans/events and market updates (ie. how's the dow been doing, price of oil, federal funds rate, some stock recommendations). The next half we usually get a speaker from an investment bank, hedge fund, pe firm, other similar areas.
The good thing about being in this club is that I get first dibs on tickets to see Jim Cramer when he comes to UT next month. :)
Would it make sense to have just an IBD Investment Banking Club, to try to get people to understand that IBD isn't about being a stock broker, which I think is the major misconception, especially at schools where IBanks don't recruit.
I should probably mention that the club's actual name is University Investors Assoication, but a large majority there wants to get into ibanking, so there is a lot of presentations and information regarding that area.
A student investment fund which I set up in my uni last year (also in England.) I raised sponsorship and with it, my team of 25 students invest in the stock market. We also bring in speakers from the city to talk to us about general finance stuff and our portfolio. Seeing as you cant get M&A experience whilst at uni, I found that the fund is a great way to get people involved and managing real money is exciting. It also didnt hurt come interview time when we could all talk about our views on the sectors we manage and the market in general - the future of recruiting will be recruiters actually tracking portfolio progress at this rate!
At UT, we also have the Investment Banking Association. The club is run by seniors who are doing ibanking next year. The purpose of the club is to help the junior class prepare for interviews and help them network with the banks. It's a competive club, and you have to apply to get in. Each junior is then mentored by a senior who will be doing ibanking full-time in the fall. It's an incredibly helpful organization, and it's all about helping UT kids getting placed into IB. Each junior has a mentor that went through the exact same process for internships, met with the same interviewers, and can give insight that really no one else can.
Check out the website to get a feel for the group:
www.texasiba.com
Thanks for the comments. I'll check out that website. We have an organisation that is planning on starting up an investment fund, but (as much as it may help at interviews), I don't feel that an investment club would inform people about what IBD people do. I just feel that IBD is a profession that 99% of people don't understand, and I'd like to keep them separate. I like the thought of a mentoring programme, complementing the service provided by the Careers Service (which is pretty minimal in terms of IBanking).
I never heard of that TexasIB. Did you go through it, and if so did you think it was a strong component of you landing your job?
Yes, it was definitely helpful when preparing for interviews, sizing up your competition, and networking with other UT students who are going through (and have already gone through) the same grueling process.
The goal of the club is to get UT juniors internships with Wall Street banks and help build UT's brand in the investment banking community. We don't sit around and talk M&A, IPO's, and other finance related issues. We don't bring in speakers and go on field trips. The club is run entirely by seniors who have successfully gone through the internship and full-time process and want to help out fellow UT students.
Do any other schools out there have a similar type club? All it takes to get started is a few seniors who want to help out a little. Every major bank is represented I believe by a student who's been a part of the club.
Our Investment Association has started branching out into a small-change fund as well; really though, if it's going to serve the needs of the ambitious pre-professional it has to be educational and recruiting-oriented. That is, the leadership should be working the recruiters at various firms, trying to get good speakers who've done it and gotten the T-shirt, and greasing the internship-track. Encourage participation (individual presentations on topics of interest, industry research sub-group, roundtables) so it's not simply a little tag to put on the resume; I definitely got asked about it in most of my 1st round (summer internship) interviews, so it needs to develop some cool stories or great learning opportunities to support it.
Other than that, educate educate educate. So many people I know do eRecruiting because it's like the Common App for colleges, but they know nothing about the industry and completely blow their 1st rounds (I'm at a target, interviews go to English majors as much as Econ majors, and that's no lie). What is it? What do the divisions do? Why would I want to blow 100 hrs of my life every week on it? Who's it for and what do I get out of it? What are the big happenings - how do the BB firms move markets?
And hey, education can include things like a group subscription to Minyanville or the WSJ or something like that. Weekly market presentations, happenings in the industry. And talk some business, too.
The big problem I see is that there is a fairly strong distinction between the bankers and the traders/hedge fund/quant jock type. It can be difficult to serve both markets; in retrospect, I can say ours aims more at the latter, particularly because it's the super math geniuses that get the quant positions as Freshmen and come into the club knowing some "real" finance. At the same time, education on any of the divisions of finance can at least illuminate the others by exhaustion.
Oh, and don't forget "interview tips and tricks." People like stories, particularly from people they know at least a little bit; bring in people with horror stories, laugh it up, make recruiting a 3 Musketeers-type all-for-one thing.
As far as getting a sense for actual firms, try to organize tours of some banks; make a "Investment Associal to [insert financial district here]" to get a slightly better sense for firm cultures. They're different, and they should influence the decision.
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