In the past few years there’s been a lot of M&A activity that in part I imagine can be attributed to the low interest rate environment and a few other factors which has been keeping investment banks and their bankers quite busy. My question is, how does IB as a career fair during a down economy or a high interest rate environment? Looking forward to anyone’s insight.
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IB market tends to "juniorize" because you can hire tons of interns cheaply and fire off people who were making a crap ton in yearly bonuses + promote junior levels higher and pay them less than you were paying their former bosses.
At any rate, it's results that make you recession proof. So if you're already in the market and you're high up (like an MD or VP) but you're bringing in so many deals that you're a key component of the firm, you'll be alright. If you're higher up and you are bringing in less money than your counterparts then you're screwed.
That's just my 2 cents from what I've heard after searching all of this up (I'm pretty concerned myself because I'll graduate in about 2 years and probably in the middle of a recession). It's hard to be in an industry where things are lucrative as everything goes well but understandably slow when the economy is slow. Some companies take advantage of the "discount" and acquire other companies. Others fail their IPOs because investors are wary of investing as much. It's all about the "right place at the right time"
My bad to anyone who tries to read this novel. This website always condenses my posts to a single paragraph when I’m on mobile
Nice post and agree. I think it’s also helpful to point out what product your team will focus on, along with size of transactions. Global MM may prove to be in-demand give the amount of sponsor equity needing to be put to work. Plus, some of these same MM firms cover RX - considering the appetite for leverage, a blip in the economy could keep some of these firms churning full steam ahead.
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