East Asians in High Finance

I’m an East Asian student, looking to go into IB. However, even though Asians are seen as over represented in finance, is this true in the higher up positions as well? MD, PE partner, etc? I haven’t seen many in my networking, so I’m not sure if this is more of an institutional or personal issue?

19 Comments
 

"muh racism"

work your ass off and network

there's no "however"

stop trying to find an external cause for your potential failure if you don't manage to break into IB

 

There aren't many asian MDs/Partners for the same reason there aren't many females: because when the people who are currently seniors were leaving college, IB was not considered an option for minorities/women. That's changed now, and in 20 years we'll see the impact when MDs/Partners are representative.

 
Most Helpful

From what I've seen, it's true that Asians are in serious systematic disadvantage (especially Asian male).

No access to any of diversity program, whereas LGBTQ+ and black, hispanic take advantages of those. A lot of them are just naturally more introverted which probably works against them.

Despite the disadvantage, they always kill hard technicals, have better work ethics (not so sure about Bill Tsai tho), and there are huge Asian representation especially at Boutique banks.

For senior level,

Carlyle CEO (Kewsong Lee), Blackstone CFO (Michael Chae), KKR heir (Joe Bae), PJT managaing partner (Ji-Yeun Lee), CVP's Effron's best man (Anthony Kim)

Above went to finance when the industry was white-dominant, and they earned their places with their work quality and ethics.

Also, I've personally never heard any internal group training team w/o some Asian dudes in it.

So it's true, it's hard to break in as a junior, but if you know your s and really prepare, it's def doable.

 

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