Hey monkeys,
I made the switch from IB to a product focused corporate banking group late last year. Deal flow is better than my group in IB; however, I am finding the non-deal related work (60-70% of my time) to be absolutely unbearable - compliance, portfolio monitoring, administrative tasks. Literally feels like I am Peter in Office Space slowly dying.
It isn't that the pay is bad, or that my co-workers are jerks/super difficult to work with. It is primarily the amount of of utterly mind numbing tasks that I have to put up with. I am considering going back to IB specifically because of this (pitchbooks are much more interesting in comparison).
My question is, have any of you dealt with this (CB or not)? And if so, did you transition to a smaller firm, the buy side (debt fund), or IB? Any insight would be helpful.
Gracias
Can absolutely sympathize with you, with the caveat that I wasn't in IB prior to my current gig. There are for sure days where the compliance grind really gets old (I'm in a very regulated industry vertical which does not help matters). I'm also at a full service Bank so things like TM/ swaps/ FX are often a larger driver of the day to day relationship, so even though I likely have a better understanding of how the company is actually performing and where they are going, I'm often left taking the back seat (the amount of indemnification I have to do for guys who literally couldn't read a cash flow statement is pretty bad) to the "Need to sell products and make quotas guys". That's not to take a shot at them, I understand that if a deal didn't come direct from a sponsor it was probably sourced from an internal TM guy who has had a relationship for years, it's just a frustrating aspect of the deal flow process having to drag that person to Company meetings and watch their eyes glaze over when I'm going through corporate minutia with a CFO. I will say I've taken the temp within my group and from what I can gather, it sounds like no matter where you go it's a lot of the same stuff, banks are mostly the same and if you go to a finco you don't generally deal with the TM side (they don't have product offerings which is why you see the L+8 - L+10 deals there) but you're literally the one doing every bit of PM work with no real backstop (there are generally less/no Ops people to actually do all the stuff in the background you wouldn't otherwise deal with at a Bank). Tl:dr - grass is always greener, and drone work is always gonna exist; unless your deal flow falls off a cliff and you're not getting Underwriting reps, may not be the worst idea to stick it out.
I made the same transition from IB to CB before going to corporate development - hear you on the routine work but personally, I didn't find pitches interesting at all so didn't find it a big trade off.
I did have to take a big pay cut though. How steep was it for you and what product group are you in? I imagine project finance being at least somewhat interesting
just for clarity, you're saying you had to take a big pay cut from CB to CorpDev? what level did you make the jump and what (you can give a percentage) cut to Base/Bonus did you have to take?
Nope the cut was from IB to CB, approx 30+'% all in
I second the above. Pay cut from IB to CB was roughly 30% all in.
I'm in CB right now and I completely agree with you. I just started and I actually enjoy the credit analysis aspect of it. It's great learning about different companies in different industries. But the loan monitoring and other pm work is absolutely annoying, especially when you're working on more important things. Everything is almost too structured and my bank focuses adheres so strictly to their credit policies. Theres just so much small administrative shit that gets annoying to deal with .
Right - the strictness of credit policies and procedures is really getting to me. No freedom to deviate from the handbook, even if it is a better credit decision.
What are the hours like?
Usually 50-60
What are the base salary for CB(if grouped under IB arm) for Analyst and Associate?
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