Hi All,
My background:
I am a senior Analyst in the Investment Banking Division of one of the international banks. Entered the field after receiving a return offer from my Junior year summer internship.
Ask me anything
This thread would be most applicable for College Juniors / Seniors looking to enter the Investment Banking (i.e. M&A and GCM, not Markets) space in Singapore. Feel free to ask me anything about Investment Banking from a junior perspective and I will try my best to answer based on my experience.
Your degree is not really relevant. Im currently taking a tech degree (CS/IS) in one of the 3 local Us and going to one of the BBs for summer. In fact, it is rather "interesting" when you are slightly different.
Of course there are pros and cons. Since Im taking a tech degree I have to split my time between studying finance for interviews/internships and programming for my degree. I imagine it's slightly easier if you just study finance as your degree so you dont have to study other less "relevant" things. It's really up to you what and how you want to learn.
Between business and acct, you are right acct is harder to score. BUT you learn many important things in acct since im IB acct knowledge is fundamental. You can always learn acct even if you are in business but with less structure it's harder. GPA is still important of course so I lean towards business. Keep in mind, GPA is most relevant in filtering out candidate at the start. Once you meet their cut-off, it doesn't matter much. Your interviews and tests would be the main determinant factors.
For CCA, it's most relevant when you are looking for your first internship since you don't have any exp. Join any of the finance CCAs to showcase your interest and learn a bit on what you are getting yourself into. After your 2nd internship, it's not relevant anymore.2
In Singapore, the offices usually have corporate finance teams that cover M&A and GCM together, with sector teams based in Hong Kong. Hence you may specialise in a field only at the VP level or above (though you can "specialize" by requesting specific project types to your staffer)
The overseas experience is not really valued as much these days. There is an excess of candidates in Singapore at junior levels - The preference would still be for Singaporeans who did College in the US / UK looking to work in Singapore upon graduation
In terms of deal flow, JPM and MS are the top 2. CS is a close third
Next in the pecking order are Citi, BAML, UBS, and Evercore
Others with some presence in Singapore include Barclays
GS is not really in the top 5 in Singapore due to the 1MDB incident