Citigroup Corporate Banking

Was with JPMorgan Corporate Banking over the summer on an internship. Corporate bankers in JPM are heavily involved in leveraged/acquisition financing, arranging syndicated loans for LBO targets. E.g. say GS and KKR (or some other ibanks/pe shops) wants to takeover a major listed company but does not have the sufficient funds to do so. If JPM is appointed the lead arranger for the syndicated loan, it would rope in typically 10-15 banks (the largest syndicated loan involved 30+ banks) to arrange a syndicated loan for the borrowers and charge them an upfront fee and another 100-200 bps above LIBOR for the term loan.

Hours are fairly decent, usually from 9-9pm (occasionally 1-2am when the deal's very urgent). Pay wise, definitely less than what corp.fin is paying, but the difference isn't too huge.

James is pretty much spot-on, although duties and work depend on the group. Exit ops are somewhat similiar to ibanking. Pay is less. Numbers at my bank for '06: 10 + 60 + 30-50 (bonus).

Is that entry level, out of undergrad ?

yes

Considering that the hours are a lot less, the pay ain't bad at all...

Cool, thanks for the info. How about weekend work - is it the norm, or is it pretty much a m-f job?

I haven't seen many corporate banking types in the office on the weekend - they sometime do have client entertainment though

Usually go into the office over the wkend for a couple of hours when my VP has some tasks for me. At an analyst level, expect to go back on wkends for about 5 hrs each on sat & sun (2-7pm typically).

Good thing about Corporate Banking is that alot of client interaction is involved, starting even at the analyst level. Which is something that I really enjoyed when I was interning there.

Is it easy for a non-target to get into corporate banking at Citi?

James,

I had a buddy who did his summer internship at JPM two years ago. You must have been in a horrible office as far as work culture goes, as my friend was typically out by 6-7 every day with almost no weekend work at all. There might have been one Saturday where he had to go into the office.

Additionally, I think the one other aspect you're missing in your description is that CB is an ORIGINATION function as opposed to an EXECUTION function. As a result, you're really just bringing the deals to the bank and letting the "real bankers" do all the heavy lifting. As a result, you're typically not the guy slaving over the 100 page OMs.

i mean no disrespect by the "real bankers" comment. i put it in parentheses mainly as a sarcastic joke.

This particular field sounds pretty interesting. Not such insane hours, decent pay and client interaction. What are the top banks in this field and are the exit opps good? Also, what is the comp like as one moves up from analyst to associate to vp etc.

james,

in that case, your experience was completely different from my friend's. in his case (also at JPM) as i mentioned above, product groups like syndicated/leveraged finance, interest rate derivatives, converts, equity capital markets, etc. would be pulled in to actually do the capital markets transactions once the client was signed up. as a result, while cb associates and analysts were still responsible for putting together committee memos, they weren't the individuals drafting syndicated finance OMs or m&a advisory slides--those tasks typically fell to the associate/analyst teams on the product group side.

Does anyone know what a corporate banking associate salary at JPM might be?

i could definitely be wrong here, but my buddy was paid at the same rate as investment banking analysts with the exception of a smaller eoy bonus.

if this relationship holds true for associates as well, you're probably looking at at least 85 to 95k in base which would be about market for an associate.

However, I would imagine bonuses would be significantly lower? If that's the case, even a total package of $130-150 for a 1st year associate is not bad, particularly if the hours are sane.

as i don't personally know any associate-level corporate bankers. however, while i do think that this would make a good long-term career if this is the type of stuff you're interested in, i would have to at least question what type of exit opportunities you'd really have. perhaps i'm wrong, but i really don't see ex-corporate bankers making it into the leagues of pe/vc/hf.

A good point indeed. I don't know any corporate bankers either. I assumed they were glamorous commercial bankers. However, corporate bankers do seem to touch similar scope of work as IB/CF/PE. That said, given the transactional nature of the work, be it origination or execution, it certainly appears like corporate bankers are well positioned to build strong networks with IB/CF/PE/HF's etc. Seriously, not everyone gets into IB. So such a career might not be bad for folks coming from non-target schools and really wanting to transition into IB/PE later etc.

Is it less selective? Do they tend to hire more/less people than for IBanking?

Sasquatch! Really? I still have to believe corporate banking is rather intriguing to non-target candidate and even some target candidate who don't want the IB lifestyle.

i would have to agree that corporate banking is probably not as competitive as i-banking. however, getting into corporate banking probably isn't a complete cakewalk either given that there are arguably more i-banking spots than there are corporate banking spots.

keep in mind that Citi and JPM are really the only two banks that separate corporate banking from investment banking with distinct corporate banking entities and investment banking entities. at most places i.e. BofA/Wachovia/DB, etc. corporate banking is folded into investment banking, and incoming analysts/associates can't choose to go down a dedicated corporate banking career path.

however, what you do see more and more of these days is the cross-selling of investment banking services into the realm of traditional "commercial banking" clients. as a result, many commercial (i.e. middle market) bankers are also involved in the selling and pitching of investment banking services such as bonds and derivatives.

as a result, what you really end up seeing is corporate and investment banking industry groups maintaining relationships with the top tier fortune 500-level clients and regionally focused commercial banking groups maintaining relationships with middle market companies and bottom-tier fortune 500s that are less frequent users of capital markets instruments.

at the end of the day, while cib analysts/associates will do a lot of execution, all will ultimately pull from the product group ranks (i.e. syndications, dcm, ecm, derivatives, private placements, etc.) to assist with execution and pricing.

thus, to answer your question, there are avenues for non-target individuals. however, these are more pure play commercial banking roles as opposed to the corporate banking roles mentioned in this thread.

however, at the end of the day, the line between commercial banker/investment banker is rapidly blurring. in order to maintain a high level of service to clients, investment bankers simply can't cover any and every client under the sun. as a result, investment bankers will typically maintain relationships with the most profitable clients and push off relationships with less profitable clients (including some of those fortune 500s that do fewer acquisitions and are less frequent users of capital markets instruments) to commercial bankers.

with this in mind, i would argue that commercial banking is likely the best "foot in the door" means of getting into the industry for non-target individuals.

Curious, are corporate bankers and relationship bankers synonymous now? Interesting, a few weeks ago a recruiter I was working with forwarded me a position profile for a CB role at JPM. At first glance, the scope did seem similar to what an associate in IB would do. Perhaps I was too snobbish and didn't give it serious consideration. However, this post is motivating me reconsider! Intriguing me a little...

keep in mind that there are lots of types of relationship managers. at the end of the day, all are simply glorified salesmen(women) in the sense that if you don't produce, you'll be replaced by someone else who can.

although many people on this board don't make the connection, being a relationship manager at a bank is a lot like being a sales manager for a pharmaceutical company or power tools company. while i won't disagree that being a banker is more prestigious, it's still a sales job at the end of the day.

starting at the bottom, you'd have personal bankers who maintain relationships with clients at bank branches. moving on up, you'd have financial advisors who are the 'relationship managers' for the retail investor segment. private bankers could thus be referred to as 'relationship managers' for high net worth individuals.

business bankers might manage relationships with companies under $10MM in revenues while commerical bankers might manage relationships with middle market companies. moving on up, corporate bankers manage relationships with top-tier fortune 500s.

at the end of the day, relationship management / sales is what banking is all about and this is why the whole industry / product divide exists. you need a) people to manage the relationships and b) people who know how certain products work. in certain instances where you have either i) very sophisticated clients (i.e. the GEs of the world) or ii) bigger but less profitable clients at play (a former cib client that was migrated down to a commercial banker due to low RAROC), you might need c) people who understand an industry (at the cib level, relationship and industry are basically the same).

thus, think of this setup as the hub and spoke system that holds a wheel together. client/relationship management might be at the center of the wheel, but the spokes (product groups) are also needed to help the wheel stay together.

Understood. Actually, I still have ane mail from the recruiter last month that sent me a position profile in corporate banking... which I dismissed. Didn't even want to pursue it:

"Relationship Assistant Manager in the Corporate Banking Group. The group focuses on U.S. companies which require traditional banking services, are users of investment banking products, are located in a five state footprint, and have revenues of $250 million to $2 billion. Our business partners include Product Specialists from the Global Investment Bank (Syndications, Private Placements, Investment Grade and High Yield Bonds, Asset Backed Securities, Equity Capital Markets, M&A, etc), as well as Coverage Partners from Treasury Services, Investment Management & Private Banking.
The position is primarily geared to providing leadership to deal teams and accountability for pitch book preparation working with analysts, senior deal team members, and credit underwriting. As a member of the team, the position plays an integral part to help gain, manage and maintain the relationships located in the region.

To shed some light on the hiring process for corporate bankers, all in all, I had to undergo 5 rounds: 1) Verbal and numerical online assessment tests 2) Phone interview with an associate and VP (with quite a fair bit of technicals such as DCF models, ratio analysis, relative valuations) 3) Went down to JPM office for a 2.5 hr case study. To cut the story short, basically I had to pour through a company's annual report and 3 diff houses' equity research on that company, and based on business/financial analysis (particularly credit & ratio analysis), make a final recommendation if the $2.0 bln bridging loan to the company is worth the risk of default and if so, at what i/r should JPM charge. 4) Took a trip down to JPM again and had a 1-1 interview with the MD of Corporate Banking. Was fairly relaxing with alot of fit questions. 5) One of the VPs (whom I was eventually assigned to work under) gave me a call and offered me the summer internship, but not before giving me another round of impromptu phone interview (he broke the news only at the very end of the phone interview).

Hope my info helps, if you are considering the associate position in JPM corporate banking. I surmise that the process for the associate position should be largely similar.

Some other facts of corporate banking at JPM which might be of interest, is that we work very closely with capital markets as Monkey_Island has described adequately (especially with DCM). If DCM determines that debt issuance isn't viable for the client (e.g. because of poor credit ratings), DCM will pass the client over to the corporate bankers to put together a syndicated loan for the client. In which case, even though DCM is the originator, but both DCM and corporate bankers will work hand-in-hand to execute the deal.

Noteworthy, quite a number of my VPs were originally from DCM, and I guess they switched over to corporate banking to achieve a more balanced lifestyle, even though the bonus is considerably lesser. Similarly, alot of junior analysts/associates have also been able to make the switch over to capital markets, due to the close working relationship between capital markets and corporate bankers.

And 1 more important point to add, more often than not, corporate bankers extend banking services to high-risk corporate institutions (i.e. default prone clients) to maintain the ibanking relationship with them. You never know when they will turn-around and come to you for M&A or underwriting services.

james,

if you don't mind my asking, did you work in a regionally-focused cb group? or was it more of an industry or client-specific type group? the reason i ask is because your experience sounds different in focus from my friend's. in his group, they had no sponsor coverage and were focused on the all companies (both investment grade and non-investment grade) within a certain revenue band i.e. 500m to 2b

James,

This thread has been very informative for me. Actually, wouldn't mind speaking with you offline. Let me know what's the best way to contact you.

Also, as this recruiter presented it, the JPM position profile which I shared in thread above, appeared to have a region focus.

i just picked up on this over lunch, but you're not uk -based corporate banking by chance are you?

i'm in no way disputing your story or calling you a liar by any means, but i've never really heard of an investment bank's north american division (much less corporate banking division) offering a verbal and numerical test. such a test is more characteristic of a bank's european i-banking division where pre-employment tests are common.

True the other way around too... e.g. if you're a US candidate exploring an international position in IB or CF, you're likely subject to pre-employment tests. e.g. if you're getting screened for cross-border transaction work etc.

And most syndications are 1 to 4 banks. Even the hardest to do aren't ususally more than 10. The Northwest DIP was about 8 banks, which is the most I can remember seeing on a cover. Today, $2 billion deals can be done by one bank if the deal is straightforward.

Buysideanalyst, who are you with?

I actually told my recruiter today to go ahead and share my resume with JPM corporate bank, entirely influenced by this post which has been informative.

buyside,

from your "cover" comment i take it that you're referring to lead arrangers, administrative agents, syndication agents, doc agents, etc. (i used to be a LevFin guy myself). however, i think the poster above is referring to all bank (non-fund) participants, in which case 30+ isn't unrealistic for larger transactions.

Well you'll find out what its all about when you go through the interview process. If it works for you then great.

The banks would call be an investor. Basically I work for a fund that invests in loans, bonds and cds.

The CB group I worked for has a regional focus and we definitely had sponsor coverage (the group helped financed a $400 mil GS PE deal when I was interning there). In addition, each of the VP in the group has a particular CB focus (e.g. specialising in derivative swap transactions; acquisition/leveraged financing; etc).

There is no distinct industry/product focus, but some of the VPs are more exposed to certain industries from what I have observed. My VP has a particular penchant for doing LBO deals in TMT. While another VP in the group is proficient with FIG deals.

To aadpepsi: Sure thing, just PM me if you need additional information.

To Monkey_Island: I am speaking solely on my own personal experience this summer at JPM CB. I have benefited alot from ibankingoasis and I am just returning the favour using my own limited knowledge. I interned in JPM HK. Our coverage include the greater China region, including Taiwan and South Korea.

To buysideanalyst: Unless the loan amount is small, most banks will not be willing to take up the entire exposure (at least not JP). Cases of 1 bank taking up the entire exposure is rare, but not impossible. Say if JP is the sole arranger of the loan, they will attempt to sell-down their exposure to the other banks right after sealing the deal with the client.

james,

like you, i'm simply trying to return the favor. i once benefited from the knowledge of vault's message boards before they completely sucked.

at any rate, i just wanted people to be aware that JPM cb in asia (or elsewhere for that matter) is structured differently than jpm cb in the us.

in the us, the regional focus is on individual states (i.e. florida/texas) which are large enough to be classified as single entities or groups of states (i.e. the carolinas) which together could potentially come close to the volume generated by a texas or florida.

unlike in hk, cb rms aren't "specialists" of any type. rather, they simply seek to originate capital markets transactions while institutionalizing client relationships that cib can't manage due to lack of capital markets activity, profitability, or time.

thus, as buyside correctly pointed out, execution in the states is done by the product groups. this is consistent with my friend's jpm experience.

not taking anything away from you here--your hk experience is what it was. just wanted to point out the differences in the us since that's where most people would end up being employed.

also, in the us, you'd maybe have 2 interviews tops--a preliminary hr screening interview followed by an interview with the group you'd be potentially joining. no pre-employment assessments or case studies...

We work on alot of cross-border transaction with our corporate banking counterparts in NYC and the group structure is exactly the same as that in HK. My VP started out his corporate banking career in NYC before being transferred over to HK 4 yrs ago.

No disrespect here, but your friend worked in JPM CB 2 years ago, and in the span of those 2 years, the job scope and responsibilites of a JPM corporate banker has changed considerably. Cheers.

Realistically, this board has motivated me to broaden my "net" beyond IB because reality is that (i) 1Yr associate positions post-MBA, even with 1Y in corporate finance are fiercely competitive even at the middle market banks, (ii) I'm in the industry for the long haul, but one must admit that other positions share execution functions similar to IB'ing, (iii) I'm simply older and IB's have a perception of folks that are older as not being "coachable".

James, I'll contact you via PM to discuss JPM further. I found out from my recruiter what region has the opportunity.

A lot of the above is quite surprising to me. I work in leverage finace (we refer to it as acquisition finance) in south africa and we work very closely with corporate finance/structured finance and DCM. In addition to this our involvement includes deal execution. I find it strange that leveraged finance is regarded as corporate banking elsewhere, it is definitely IB here. We source/structure/price (this includes mezzanine finance with equity upside)/consider hedging strategies/execute. Pretty much jack of all trades. There is definitely an overlap with corporate banking so I do understand the classification, but in my opinion this is definitely in the realms of IB.

hey guys,just wondered if some1 could posibly provide me with sum insight in2 the wrld of corporate finance i.e. m&a. At the moment i work as a risk consultant for the nuclear industry and wanted to move into finance and was very impressed by m&a..could any1 possibly provide me with details of wat one does day to day in that specific department and the type of person it wud suit.

thanks in advance

Is that titles and position descriptions don't translate equally at different banks. e.g. "portfolio manager" at one bank could mean someone in Asset Management, whereas in another bank it could refer to a relationship manager etc. Same goes for corporate finance and its functions. One has to look very closely at position descriptions, talk to people etc.

Your job coverage in SA pretty much sounds like what corporate banking in HK is like. We do alot of acquisition/leveraged financing and CB is definitely synonymous with it. Alot of our deals also involve bridging loans (mezzanine financing), and entering into hedging positions with our clients (mainly swaps).

Like what aadpepsi mentioned, the industry often uses different titles/names to differentiate their offerings. Gotta look at the position descriptions for a better comparison. Cheers.

james,

fair point--i don't profess to know it all. just want to make sure no one on this board is misinformed.

Learnt quite a fair bit from your contributions as well. Thanks. As long as everyone's contributions have some merit to it, its always good to hear them out.

Does anyone have any insight on Relationship Associate – GSG at Citi? What would be the pay for a Senior Associate and VP level banker? Would Treasurer or perhaps even CFO be a possible exit for a Senior Corporate Banker? How does IB and CB interact at Citi nowdays?

I'm not sure if this is a relevant place to ask this question, but I noticed this thread was bumped and a lot of posts in this thread are about JPM Corp banking. I know JPM has CCB for clients in the 500 mil to 2b rev range, but where/what is the major corporate banking group now? Is it split between lev fin/credit risk or is it just lev fin?