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Associate is a pretty common title for junior people in professional services firms (law firms would be another example). It was probably even more analogous to law firms back in the day when MBAs were more of a requisite and they were thought of as career bankers in training. The analysts back then were on a strictly 2 year stint, not there for the long haul like “associates” in banking or law, and my guess is they got the name since they worked almost entirely on the analyses. The VPs are relatively mid-level, but since they take on a lot of client interaction and are the face of the execution, makes sense to give them an important sounding title I guess. Just guessing on all of these.
I thought the question was where do the ranks for all the investment banks come from (ie tier 1 BB etc) and was going to say....pretty sure it came from successive generations of interns / prospects on this very forum.
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