London IB BB is a challenge
Just started at a London IB and yeah, it's not easy at all
- Everyone's on edge and juniors seem to be very cliquey because of how intense the workload is
- Seniors either love the work they do or would rather be anywhere else but the job
- I feel bad for the non-Eu and british students that don't speak french or italian because about half the floors are 50% italian and not knowing the language makes it difficult to form meaningful connections
- staffing, resources and availability of other data sources is v limited
not sure if to recommend to other people as a career, most often it's easier to get by if you know what you're doing but if not, can be brutal
It’s sustainable if you’re from Europe and speak one of the languages. Brits seem to do OK if they land in one of the UK teams. Miserable and isolating for everyone else.
Buyside is generally worse.
I did IB in the US but why are the UK teams so European? They cover all of Europe from the UK I assume?
So you mainly have foreigners working in the Investment Banks in London. I wonder how the brits feel about this lol.
Brits with one language are the ones who struggle the worst because they don't have the language possibilities to really connect with Italians or French who are in England for the first time and trying to connect
Really tough on them but it's what it is, normally the lateral Brits tend to do better imo
Brits are also in general the weakest as they studied completely random subjects and join with 10 weeks of work experience. On the other hand, Europeans have >12 months of IB/PE internships (also internships in Frankfurt/Milan/Paris are very rough) and a master’s degree
"Weakest" is a terrible adjective. The British curriculum is optimised for academic study in lieu of internship experience. Whilst this comes with clear downsides, I would prefer to be around someone who studied something they were genuinely interested in at a great university rather than another cookie-cutter HEC Finance student.
UK studies are an absolute joke vs what people from continental Europe have to go through to end up in BB in London. It isn't even the same tier of blood, sweat, and tears.
The UK is optimized for selecting bright 18 year olds, and then letting them do whatever they want for 3 years with 0 risk of failure and limited pressure comparatively.
Read what you just wrote again. Why would you want to live in a world where we are not selecting bright 18-year-olds who are full of potential? So we should all suffer, study finance, and sacrifice all of our hobbies/interests to secure a job in IBD?
Lame.
you sound like a muppet. Working at my BB it is rather ridiculous how many continental europeans there are, how cliquey they are and how much favouritism there is towards certain nationalities compared to uk nationals. italians/french/spanish have it easier than students from the UK as there is such this strong international network and pipeline that makes it easy for them to network and land jobs. they end up having very little personality in the process though however
I have never seen anyone come home from sutdy abroad in the UK with worse grades than at home. Our workload is supposedly even higher, going by my peers (incl. UCL, KCL & Warwick for comparison). However, we are supposed to complete like 3-4 internships of 3 months during our degree, missing the first 4-8 weeks of lecture each semester.
Add to that, that we are expected to be 100% capable before even starting our roles (well, the men). You wanna do your first boutique internship? Be prepared for 4 rounds of interview with a onepager and a model as "casestudy". People going through this are better prepared than UK students with the 400 Qs simply cuz they have to be.
For context I also work in London BB.
I think you’re right that objectively the European’s are better landing on the desk day 1 due to their previous 4 internships and knowing a lot of the basic skills. However, that doesn’t make them definitely better by the end of the internship / a few months into the internship.
In my opinion we should be selecting interns based on potential for growth, not just previous internships (also applies to European candidates but is where the UK candidates mostly fall short)
Where I work the UK teams are also staffed by non Brits so it's still super difficult alas
Sounds like MS
Yes
pretty much all of them are like this
As a brit in a EMEA team and I couldn't give a toss about wanting to be in the Italian cliques.
If you grew up your entire life in London, you have your friends in the city. Work and Life, strict church/state seperation is needed.
For british interns it can be a problem depending on which team theyre in but yes agree once FT its something no one really needs to worry about, provided work product is there
Not really - it's actually relaxing compared to local offices. I found recruiting, Uni exams (if youre at a serious school) and other activities significantly more stressful / taxing than the work itself. Plus the standards are quite low, as it's in London, even in Top Teams.
IBD in itself is not even intellectual hard, just long hours, where in London hours are usually reasonable
Maybe this isn't for you?
I'm referencing the language issue which isn't something that reflects the lack of integration ease culturally
If you think london hours are reasonable you have never stepped in a proper London IB team without protected summer intern hours
I guarantee you my London team was working consistently more than our NYC (at a complete sweatshop) and producing significantly higher quality materials
If you’re in a team with strong dealflow hours suck just as bad
No man in fact I worked in a group consistently doing 3am before in a local office - proper 3am with barely time to grab dinner. That was tough
London is lower from the standards side, pace as well as working hours. This is consistent with the experiences of everyone I know and thats a wide range of people. There might be some horrible outlier sweatshops like PWP and PJT and GS TMT but apart from that hours as well as stress are reasonable
Brits are disadvantaged for buy-side when you're looking for investments across Europe. It is what it is.
Unless the team is only covering UK, Europeans should be preferred.
Reading this makes me so glad i'm in the US, the superior market. Europoors love to complain about everything.
don’t feel sorry for the Brits
At least the Europeans add a bit of life and energy to the floor and appreciation for the finer things in life
When you move to the buy side (where other than mega funds most people are Brits) you realize how fuck*ng boring of an office group they all are (at least the Brits in finance) with complete inability to form real connections or have normal conversations that go beyond “living the dream” “weathers been awful. It’s extreme separation of work and personal life, you don’t know anything about anything that goes through their head, especially as everything is masqueraded by a veil of politeness. Once you experience that you will miss the “directness” of the Germans or the loud italians
This is jarringly spot on
It’s completely useless to speak German or French or Italian or Spanish. I’d rather have someone actually speak and write English properly. Big bonus for Latin or Ancient Greek. I’ve had a 100% success rate for people who studied classics.
It’s completely useless if you 1) spend your whole day interacting only with Brits and 2) do UK coverage
Unfortunately I think in all these years in banking you haven’t realized that most people on your floor don’t want either of the 2 things above
Most groups heavily depend on juniors with some level of language proficiency. If you are only speaking english and covering the UK market its fine but there are way too many C-Level Professionals who will always appreciate speaking in their native language.
There is local research in different languages, on the small- to mid-cap side, there might be legal documentation in local languages. On top of that, all seniors with certain languages enjoy working with other native speakers (French, Italians, Germans).
canary wharf's for the oxford grads who couldn't hack it on wall street
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