Thinking about making a move into banking, and was hoping someone could shed some light on time spent on specific activities. Yeah, you're working 100 hours a week, but is it half modeling and half powerpoint? What's the breakdown of time spent on which activities? Serious answers only please
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there's no rule of thumb to being an analyst. If you're pitching or marketing you could be doing something completely different from working on a live deal.
Pitches work includes: digging up tombstones, finding comps, finding transactions, modeling various valuations, and formatting it all nicely on slides along with why your firm is great. A lot of what is going on for analysts here is research into the industry, competitors, and comps. Putting that information into slides and formatting them is the final piece of the puzzle.
live deals: There is exponentially more than just powerpoint and modeling. You have to look at a sellside process from beginning to end. Pitching, management meeting, kickoff, data gathering, CIM/teasers (where your modeling and powerpoint lives), NDAs, bid analysis, stage 2 DD, management presentations, second round bids / picking a buyer, then negotiating terms. Inherent in all of these steps are boatloads of administrative work/organization and general research.
For instance, during the DD phase, you could be hosting ~10 buyers who all have ~200 DD questions. Part of the analyst job is micromanaging the seller to get this information and getting info over to buyers/updating the data room.
So depending on my week, up to 20% can be devoted to building an operating model and LBO scenarios, 30% can be slide creation and formatting, 30% can be research into the prior two subjects, and the remainder would be administrative work (but this can also take entire weeks).
TLDR, it changes. /rant
great answer, appreciate it! few follow-ups: comfortable sharing your position/group/bank? and from your experience, given all the above, what're the most important traits to highlight in interviews/bring to the job?
ASO 1 at a regional IB in M&A. When we interview, we're looking for people who understand corporate finance thoroughly, have good attention to detail, and fit in with our personalities. Fit seems to be the most important as it seems we'd rather spend 90% of our lives with someone who has similar interests as opposed to the quiet genius who is socially awkward.
Anyone can learn to model or put together a pitchbook after a few gigs.
Also not sure how important my input is. I'm a accountant -> valuation -> IB guy so my path and experience is significantly different than 90% of the users here.
I second this. Essentially covered every aspect of the job. Sometimes you get random one off asks like cap structure advisory, ratings advisory, helping vet potential CFO candidates, etc. Also, just because your group doesn't work on a specific type of transaction, doesn't mean you shouldn't know how to do it. I'm working on an IND restructuring process and I'm in coverage.
In terms of recruiting, fit is definitely #1. We'll hire a 3.5 kid who gets along with the group and is teachable, over the 3.9 2400 SAT who claims he builds models 12 hours a day and has been reading the WSJ since he was a baby. For context, at a BB in coverage. AN 1
Give me the kid who has built models 12 hours a day since he was a baby if he is legit. LOL
What is an "IND" restructuring process?
20% email 20% online data providers 20% excel 20% powerpoint 20% word
10% interesting work 20% taking notes on calls 15% adderall 5% pleasure 50% facetime and pain 0% reason to remember the name
LMAO - underrated comment for sure. slaps hard
95%: wondering why on earth I did this job
5%: having fun
Changes everyday so hard to say but in my first SA stint I swear I spent 10% of my day stressing over how I worded every single email to anyone on my team.
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