What % of your work is technical - 1st year Analysts?

Bump

Bump 

5-10%? I wouldn’t consider comps technical 

Little to none. If you’re at a BB models are built and you’ll be driven by the associate / VP in the direction you need to go. If you have a solid basis, you can look up things as you need and you’ll be able to learn from others. I’ve always tried to be the one people can lean on, but understand if you aren’t that type of person and think you’ll be ok.

Very little. I would say 85% of my job is super mundane, cookie cutter. 10% analytical. 5% ad-hoc random stuff (I.e. go pull 45 credit ratings by EOD plz). This job is grueling, yes, but intellectually hard? Not at all.

Interested in someone who works at a bank with lean deal teams.

First year at a BB but we run pretty lean deal teams (can be just MD + D + 1 of VP/As + An) and I’ve built a few models from scratch for pitches - obvs nothing crazy complicated if they let me do it from scratch, but a nice change from the endless ppt decks. Overall probably 80/20 qualitative / quantitative so far.

However, when you’re structuring a deal that just went live you’ll definitely be spending a ton of time in the model, usually even the majority of time for at least a part of executing the transaction.

+1 OP, great discussion. I’m seeing it looks like it’s roughly 90% non-technical work. I’d like to know how that percentage adjusts for a product group such as BB LevFin or Structured Finance 1st year vs a M&A 1st year vs a Coverage 1st year. Anyone in structured finance please pm.

Analyst in M&A here. The work really depends on the type of deal (sell-side vs buy-side) and where we are in the timeline of a M&A deal. This is a super hard generalization, but: 40% Modeling of some sort, 25% handling due diligence (emails, dataroom, diligence tracker, etc), 25% calls / meetings (so many calls with clients when you're in M&A - also have to attend every single call/meeting throughout the whole deal process), 10% PPT. Only time I'm ever on PPT is to copy and paste my model into a presentation format for pitches, bakeoffs, CIMs, MPs, and process update / diligence presentations.

Usually, buy-side work is 80% Modeling, 20% diligence/calls, and basically no PPT except to copy and paste your model. This is why every M&A analyst will tell you they prefer buy-side staffings vs sell-side. Also another reason why PE firms look for BB analysts - lots of buy-side exposure vs a middle market firm that usually only does sell-side M&A. Sell-side M&A models to be quite frank are very basic. Buy-side models, you need to create a ton of different scenarios, make literally everything in the model dynamic, run iterations after iterations to test out different "what-ifs" to see what returns spit out, etc. You also need to work with your financing team (capital markets, lev fin, etc) and help put something together for the internal financing committee, which has some similarities of an investment committee in PE. Buy-side advisory experience is really where it's at if you want to get the technical experience. There's a reason why the EBs have the most technical analysts - focus almost solely on M&A and do a ton of buy-sides

There's even fewer so-called technical aspects in PE.. I just started my job at an investment bank-owned PE shop in APAC, focusing on companies raising a final round prior to IPO. Models are usually sent to my team by investment banks that are handling the IPO, we only do some industry research and DD before making an internal decision on whether or not we proceed with the investment. Granted, you need to understand the models and what they entail, but I've never been required to build a complex model from scratch, only P&L forecast based on our DD.