What is a pipeline deal

The person you responded to just answered your questions in his initial post, so I don't understand your confusion.

Yes they are trying to provide a client a service/strategy, so you're working on a pitch analysis in the hopes the client likes the strategy/service and decides to move forward with what was pitched in addition to picking your bank.

Determining whether a transaction will become live depends on many factors such as:

- is the product/service being pitched to the client really helpful and feasible for the client? In most cases you can judge whether a deal will become live based on the theme of the pitch. For example, if your MD tries to pitch Amazon to buy Apple, you'll probably do a lot of work for this pitch but the likelihood of it becoming live is 0.

   For this reason, some analysts hate working with some MD's because they are having trouble getting business, which means they get desperate and will try to sell as many idea/services  to as many clients as possible in the hopes of making money for the bank. The analysts staffed under this MD will eventually see through this, and be tired of doing work for deals that will most likely never come to fruition. Imagine completing a research paper for your class, and then hearing from your professor on the day it's due that the research paper assignment has been cancelled. This feeling is 10xworse when you know the deal will never go through, but you still have to do all of that work for the pitch, stay up late and work weekends.

- does the MD have a good relationship with the client

Point 1 will be the most important