Can anyone please shed light on the path to M.D. before the Global Financial Crisis? Obviously some groups, banks and products were making record profits and working 24/7/365 at clip unseen since the crash. Curious as to what career progression looked like and if the record breaking profits made career progression move materially faster, etc.
I know this might depend wildly on the group or shop but would love to hear some thoughts. Thanks
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Same as after. 4 years of medical school.
Not really any faster. S&T has always had young MDs since that is a very eat what you kill side and it's possible to move up quickly if you generate a ton of revenue.
Banking is very old-school - do your time and promotions are pretty standardized at X years - and you didn't have 30 year old banking MDs back then either unless at a very small shop. If anything I think there's been a year or two shaved off the process... analyst -> associate came down to 2 years and associate -> VP/director has gotten quicker too
Say what you want but Ol Jeff Epstein became a partner at Bear Stearns at the ripe age of 27. Sure you hear about lots of the notable people who made it big but I am sure there definitely were more early age MDs than nowadays.
He was an options trader? See my point about S&T above - there were and still are a ton of young S&T MDs but it simply does not work that way in IB. The early/mid 30s VPs are lucky if they even get to come to the meeting and present a slide or two in IB. Just a very structured part of finance.
Steve Schwarzman was a partner at Lehman and their IB head in his early 30s.
I’d say in the 70s it was typically eight to ten years from associate to partner and you went to business school straight from undergrad so 32 to 34 was normal to make partner. M&A was an emerging field and so Steve (and yes I know him personally so I can call him that) was able to take that over at a very young age. He was (and still is) also the most talented finance person of a generation. It’s like saying Lebrun was an MVP out of high school.
why are you on wso if you know steve. actually curious, don’t you have better things to do
Kinda checks out on this site of hundreds of thousands, someone would know Schwarzman. Small world.
I came for the analyst bonus info - I don’t always trust my HR or our consultants to give me the correct facts and I want to make sure my folks are well taken care of - and now I can’t look away!
damn props to you for looking out for the team. would love to work with someone who cares about their juniors as much as you
Great guy. also, if you don't mind explaining, what specifically did Steve do early on in his career or what about him makes you consider him the most talented finance person of the generation? Thanks.
So this sounds absolutely crazy but true. I was analyst in the noughties and we had just done a deal and my client invited the deal team to one of those black tie charity dinners and someone more senior couldn’t go so my MD asked me to join (that’s why I bought a tux for the first time). Somehow, I got stuck in a conversation in a group with Bruce Wasserstein and Steve Schwarzman (who much later I got to know as a client) and they are both humble bragging about how great the other guy was. Anyway Wasserstein says about Schwarzman, “no one could explain complex ideas more succinctly or more effectively to CEOs”. And in the 1970s, M&A was emerging as a complex but critical factor in the economy (the stock market had a fifteen year slump, junk bonds were emerging and the hostile takeover become a thing). So to be young guy who can explain all of this to CEOs is a superpower.
Also know someone in high finance who used to work directly with Steve. From what I heard, he's sharp as nails even in his older years.
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