Hi,
I was wondering which areas of Finance offer the best pay per hour worked. I think I've identified that I deffo can't hack the 80+ hours weeks as an Investment Banker so I was wondering which other areas of Finance offer similarly high pay for less hours worked (trying to find a sweet spot that pays good and something I can have a fair WL Balance. Thanks :)
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Corporate Banking.
Goin into a Corp. Banking internship this summer but slightly worried about the exit opps, I think the work itself is quite interesting though!
Pretty contradictory statement - if there's a finance job that gives you the best pay / hours worked, what would you even want to exit into?
100% CB. I switched to IB and make a little more but work way more hours.
Also, culture in CB is way better.
Hey thank you. I have a couple qs- Was CB at your institution under the Investment Banking arm (CIB), What were the average hours a week you were working in CB vs IB and What was your base + bonus for CB and IB at your position levels? Appreciate it!
What were the normal hours in CB?
Compliance
Welfare checks.
Pay/Hour = infinity
Well, it would technically be undefined
get pussy, nerd
+SB
I can hear the screech of my honors algebra II teacher in 9th grade... "Vertical lines are undefined!"
French banks and/or in Project Finance or Corporate Banking.
ECM / DCM / non-modelling sponsors groups
True—although these groups still log in a ton of hours (70+)
70+ is so low what you mean
not so much ECM ever since this SPAC shit started
Thanks. What is the difference between DCM and Lev Finance? I read before that Lev Fin works a ton of hours but I don't understand if they are a part of DCM or just 2 different areas of a bank.
Lev Fin is a bit of its own animal. Wouldn't really classify it as DCM like IG, Govt, or high yield. Some LevFin groups are more banker-y and some are more capital markets-y. The distinction comes down to who runs the models; in some shops, LevFin is as intense as M&A and in others, they mostly interact with clients and do like cap tables or simple repayment models at most.
Why non modelling sponsors groups?
look into sales...market hours 8am-5pm + entertain clients in the evening on avg 3 days a week (weds, thurs, fri), but those evening hours are drinks + dinner + after dinner drinks shenanigans which are a lot of fun (wouldn't really call that "working").
when you are junior the market hours might be 7am-6pm....but once you get promoted to have your own clients that pretty much ends
Entertaining clients, even when it involves food and drinks, is work. You're not out on the town with your buddies. Sounds shitty to me.
a good saleperson becomes buddies with their clients...and enjoys entertaining. if thats not you, then sales is not for you.
this is precisely why I jumped ship to IB from equity sales - being 24 out at drinks with a bunch of 34yr old hedge fund guys is pretty brutal. I'm sure that factor gets better when you're older tho and most clients are your age / become your friends. What nobody seems to talk about though is the extraordinary headwinds the S+T+R side of the house is facing from passive fund flows and Mifid II. Melting ice cube in the truest sense
Market-facing PnL role... a niche broker somewhere working 9-4pm market hours and earning huge commissions is probs the best pay/work ratio
Ethanol or Biodiesel swaps broker. Actually the best one
CLO Manager
underrated
Could you elaborate on what this is/what they do?
A CLO manager manages CLOs (lol). Kidding aside, CLOs are products that package underlying assets (loans) into a structure that then slices into tranches, with each tranche paying varying coupons back to investors depending on where the tranche sits in the seniority. So if you were on the investment team you would be doing credit research on individual companies (and their loans).
thats a credit analyst role and I wouldn't say its cushy hours. the analysts I worked with were doing 70+ and start work early.
Not necessarily. Plenty of CD positions if you're willing to look outside of blue-chip names. Big 4 valuation / FDD is enough. Solid pay ($100 - $110K) as a 24 year old w/o prior IB experience and 40 hours/wk work life balance. Unless you're in a highly acquisitive corp / high growth team that's growing in headcount though, your career will stagnate as promotional opportunities / responsibility escalation will be limited. So while your $100K - $110K is comfy as a 24 year old, you'll very soon find yourself outstripped by your colleagues who stayed Big 4 by the time you're 27 - 28 (corporate salary raises 3% - 5% max without title promotion..). And lateraling from one CD role to another can be hard unless you have solid pre-CD IB credentials or are lateraling within a directly relevant industry.
Source: in it myself
Does doing IB before going into CD help get any better salaries? What type of salary could you get in CD after 1-2 years in IB?
The catch-22 is that in order to get into the cushy high pay-per-hour jobs you most likely need to work in the low pay-per-hour jobs first
yup, pretty much :(
What about Equity Research?
depends on the group. earnings season can be busy (80+ hours) and medical conferences for biotech groups can be busy too, I pulled 90 last week.
140-160k all in though..
Incoming first-year ER myself in an II-ranked healthcare group— how many years of experience do you have?
Nice!
Growth Equity 9am-7/8pm
Does growth equity require prior banking experience if you've already graduated? I've only looked at a couple of places but all associates are ex-bankers with the exception for some having analysts who come from targets.
Evercore NY generalist program.
Children's Book Reader At Apollo
Endowment CIO
I guarantee you that Swensen used to work 80-90hr week minimums for a decade
I guarantee you there are many endowment employees making close to, and over, 7 figures and not working more than 50hr per week. It's not to say they don't work hard, but they're not actually managing time-sensitive deal processes or trading in the market. Their workflow can be spread out over days, weeks, and months. A lot of it is relationship management.
Real estate pe, small growth equity/vc, pension funds, strategic finance at tech companies
What does comp/wlb look like in real estate pe?
Pay (base) is roughly similar to MM PE, with bonus being firm-dependent. Hours are solid with most firms doing 45-60 hours unless you are at a megafund.
Thanks- mind explaining how to get into this area?
The real answer is niche commodity brokers:
- biodiesel brokers
- ethanol futures/options
- NGLs
- Top guys at FC Stone for instance can broker anything. There is a guy in Dubai that apparently brokers crude, grain, clean products and takes home 10mm+. Just shop talk
Nothing like 7 figs for 7:30-3:30. It's a grind, but the rewards are immense
Top brokers make 2-3 bucks. Average "bench players" 250-500
Back in the Chicago floor days, brokers would get paid out daily in cash at the market close. So guys would leave "work" at 1:45 with 5,000 in cash in hand on a tuesday. All sorts of debauched stories like paying homeless people to jump into the Chicago River etc.
A lot of the less sophisticated floor guys burned money like NFL rookies and a lot are Uber drivers/broke/alcoholics
This reminds me of "the O'Hare Play". Forget where I read about it, but essentially these traders would bank a huge number on a commodity and then go straight to O'Hare. If the position hit, vaca time. If not, new job new life new city.
Thats a famous one I have heard of before. Another would be the challenge to fly Rio on Friday and make it back to market open on Monday. Who ever could prove they bedded the most chicks won a pool of $ (photos or receipts needed to verify in some cases)
Heard good things about the WLB at Goldman recently
I heard they give their employees free fruit baskets too. How sweet!
Direct lending - pretty much a higher comp ceiling version of corporate banking with less of the bureaucratic red tape.
Is this the same thing as Private Credit, or is it something different?
same thing, typically high yielding senior, junior/mezz or whole loan (snr+jnr) with IG and HY buckets
guaranteed to work over 75hrs p/w. the direct lending nerds I worked with at my last shop were in the office 8am - 11pm+ daily.
Sounds like your last shop was a sweatshop. My hours are pretty consistently 9am-7pm with maybe a handful of 80 hour weeks per year.
Newly qualified Actuary contractors (25yrs old with first time passes) can pull in £700-1k /day easy
Part qualified contractors can do £500/day easily too
Lifestyle is laid back af, 9-5 as it gets
Municipal Investment Banking
Prop trading at a firm like optiver/citadel/jane street.
This guy knows.
Corporate Finance is underrated. Get into a good FDP and you're in a good place. All in comp first year out of college (for my program) is around $85k in a low COL working 45-60 hours a week. Sure its not as much $$ as IB or consulting but I have an 800sq apartment that is around $900 a month and I have most weekend and evenings free.
Post-MBA Corporate Finance is pretty underrated. I have seen base salaries of $110-$130 at reputable F500 CorpFin rotational/development programs. Not a bad living when you're typically working 45-50 hours/week. Maybe 55-60 on the high end if your FLDP has a rotation in Corp Dev.
Agreed. I believe the MBA rotation program at my company pays a $110k base and then RSU's and cash bonuses on top of that. Fairly sizable signing bonus as well. Hours are roughly the same, but group dependent.
Self sustaining PWA at GS PWM... have seen $2M+ comp w some weeks under 40 hours... hard grind to get there though. Also see PWAs that still hustle so YMMV.
Do you work in PWM at GS?
Dupe
In every profession there are poor people and there are rich people
EVR Rx easily lmao
If you want pay / hr you're thinking small and you'd be better off with billable services like consulting / law.
in banking you get paid by the deal (at the senior level // at junior level these jobs are all comparable by the hour).
If you are not obsessed with prestige and if your self worth is not directly tied to your comp, just do ibanking at a weak euro bank like soc gen, credit ag, abn, ing or bbva.
There are obviously groups that are exceptions at these banks, but for the most part they don’t have crazy rainmakers and hours are not brutal.
Most of the seniors have a chill euro mentality and are happy just getting passive roles and junior fees.
LO AM. 50-60 hours a week. Typically no weekends or tight deadlines and the work is stimulating. Pay is marginally less than IB at junior level but the comp scales/progresses pretty significantly. The pay is higher at the senior level.
LO AM is the obvious answer here. My dad is in the industry and has friends who manage big funds that pull $10M+ a year and work 20 hours a week to basically track an index. It’s an insanely good gig once you get into the fund manager seat (though getting there is not so easy).
Don’t disagree with this at all, and LO AM would be my #1 answer to OP’s question… however the threat of passive is real, but mainly weeding out the underperforming managers / firms (if you’re firm is good or huge it’s okay);
At the end of the day when you get paid $10M to work 20 hrs per week to track an index, automation is coming…
Seems extremely difficult to break into long only AM out of undergrad though.
Also that industry is facing huge headwinds of its own with the rise of passive investing. Certainly will still be around but could see even fewer spots ten years out.
I would say this would’ve been hands down the best answer 20 years ago tho
Yeah breaking in is close to impossible given there are so few seats and near zero turnover.
The industry is facing headwinds, but this is nothing new and I think a lot of the firms have adapted. Headcount is pretty small at the big shops and a lot have pivoted to adding more solutions on the private / alts side. FI is also more difficult to move to passive than equities. I believe the remaining LO AM firms are well positioned and will remain a crucial, albeit smaller, allocation of institutional portfolios.
LO FI AM analyst here.. current satisfaction level = 10/10
What is your salary?
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