Corporate banking to investment banking?
What's the transition like? Is this an uphill battle? Is DCM or LevFin the most logical/smoothest laterals? I feel like a big hurdle is to somehow show that you have sufficient technical/modelling skills which CB isn't known to always cultivate. I'm aware that networking is likely also a huge factor. Just looking to see if anyone can add some color.
A bit of background: I'm a recent grad, soon starting FT in CB. Always wanted IB but wasn't successful in FT recruiting. The CB team is housed together with IB so there may be more interaction. I have previous big 4 TAS internship experience to back up. Thanks in advance.
Seen and heard it being done. This is from a past forum:
"Have been at JPM LevFin for a few years new and have seen this move made numerous times. Since the work itself is practically the same for a CB analyst and a LevFin analyst, almost all of the laterals I've seen have been into LevFin (with the exception of one into M&A). I would note that most of these have been at the full time level with a year or two of experience. Since you're still early on I think you have an advantage and can spin this experience into almost any group.
Regardless of the bank (JPM, BAML, or Citi) you'll get real deal exposure and in an ideal summer you'll have the chance to work on a large scale transaction within the IB. At the end of your internship you'll then hopefully have a sense of the different roles the CB juniors, LevFin juniors, and Coverage juniors play within a deal team.
While the most natural path is to LevFin, l see no reason why you can't position yourself for a coverage role the following summer as well (i.e. you worked on a healthcare CB deal, which fueled your passion for the industry. Now an ideal career for you would be working with healthcare companies on all strategic transactions and not just debt financing). Your skills will also be refined as you worked within the IB umbrella during your sophomore summer and know what is expected at the analyst level. CB teams work hand in hand with all of the IB teams and close transactions worth billions of dollars (no $50mm Term Loans in this neck of the woods)."
Ty! do you mind linking the past thread if available?
There are many people that I have seen make the transition. Honestly, it's probably one of the easier transitions to make because of how closely CB works with IB (at least that's how it is in Canada for most of the Big 5). I would say, kill your first year in CB (it might take a little longer) and then once you have a reputation of being a solid analyst, network and ask for a transfer into IB.
Ty that's really reassuring. Would you say it's important to work a year/establish a rep and then network? In other words, could networking too early actually hurt my chances?
I don't think it would necessarily hurt your chances but I think it's important to have your feet grounded first in your CB role before going out and networking. Also if your network right off the bat and your CB team find out (which they probably will) then they might not be the happiest. A few months in, maybe that's a different story.
Remember, the MDs in CB and IB work very closely together (assuming you want to stay in the same industry group) so they are most likely very close to each other. So you want your MD in CB to preach for you which will make the transition easier. Even if you network with all of IB, in the end, they will ask your team how you were. Even if they like you, if you were shit, then they won't take you.
My honest advice is that if you have the mindset of jumping ships before even starting, then your not going to get the most out of this role. I would focus on doing well in CB, learning as much as you can, and then if you still want to jump to IB then great. Your career is going to be 40+ years. There's no rush! If you really want IB ASAP, I would network with other banks and go that route.
I went from CB analyst in regional city (bank didn’t do IB) to BB IB VP in a financial centre within 6 years, in a strong coverage team.
focus on working hard and picking up any opportunity that comes your way. Don’t be afraid to network. It’s not what you know in this world.
I went from CB to MM IB to MM PE. The biggest hurdle as you said is proving to interviewers that you have the technical knowledge to make the jump and that you understand the job and what you’re signing up for. The actual transition itself is actually pretty easy in my opinion. Majority of my job was practically the same, was just working more hours.
I lateraled outside of my current bank to IB at like the 2.5 year mark. I started seriously looking, networking and interviewing about 10 months before that. COVID started in the beginning of my search so that through things off for a few months.
To be honest, I laugh looking back thinking about the networking I did and interviews and people questioning whether or not I was prepared to be an IB analyst coming from CB. For some reason IB people think the job is rocket science, when in reality it’s attention to detail and mostly simple algebra.
I would come in with the mindset if you switch that you will reset in analyst years. I joined as a first year and even did the training in the summer (lol for the second time, even though I did the same training in CB with the IB people when I started originally out of school). I was at a huge advantage of having 2.5 years of experience though so I basically crushed it compared to the kids right of undergrad. The biggest thing is just being humble and having a can do attitude. No task is too small. My group offered to promote me a year early after a few months of really good performance. Instead of staying to be promoted, I left to the buyside that summer right before my bonus and promotion.
I did do some interviewing for senior analyst roles where I wouldn’t had to reset to an A1 but those interviews were always more of an uphill battle. I came close with a few final round interviews for experienced positions but typically got beat out by someone with IB experience. People in IB are risk adverse and not necessarily outside the box thinkers so they always rather go with someone with IB in their title rather than CB or something else if there’s the choice.
The hard part about recruiting to come in as a first year is that some people will think you are too senior to do that. Which was funny, because it would create this limbo where I could network with different people in the same group and some would think I’m too senior to recruit to be an A1 and need to wait for a lateral position to open or some people would thing I don’t have enough relevant experience to be a senior analyst so I need to recruit for an A1 spot.
Anyways, my advice would be to keep your head down for at least a year, learn the CB role, get your first bonus, then start networking and recruiting for IB roles. The biggest exit from CB is probably to IB so it’s certainly done often. Good luck
That was really insightful, really appreciate the candid descriptions and that's awesome what you pulled off.
Looking forward to grounding myself in CB for the first year and making that switch.
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