What are vacations like in IB/CB/Corp Dev
Whats your allocation like? Are you able to take any? How many days/weeks at a time?
Is it possible to have a “real vacation” with getting calls/checking emails or getting staffed mid-day?
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An occasional Saturday off.
I work in Corporate Banking in a mid tier European Bank. My firm gives me 25 days of annual leave +2 days family care leave (in addition to 12 public holidays) and we are encouraged to utilise all of it. Generally we take 2 continuous weeks of compliance leave but I have seen folks who take 3 continuous weeks if they have leave stacked up for the year. If we aren't able to utilise all our leave for the year, then we get to carry forward 5 days of leave to the next year. I have real vacations where I practically don't look at my work mails for days at a time because my leave cover would take care of any attendant issues that require my attention. In fact during compliance leave we aren't even supposed to respond to any mails officially. At best we can only forward them to our leave cover for them to action on anything urgent. Of course I would return the favour when it would be their turn to take leave. After having worked for European banks for 9 years now, I really cant work in an American bank anymore tbh.
Good to know thank you! Pardon my ignorance but what constitutes a compliance leave?
No worries. We use the terms Block leave and compliance leave interchangeably. Block Leave is a period of mandatory 10 days of continuous leave excluding the weekends. Every front office employee is supposed to mandatorily take it every year. During Block leave, an employee is not supposed to login from home or anywhere and is supposed to have no contact with the bank except for personal purposes. The idea is to avoid the employee of taking any decisions that are work related.
This is mainly for security purposes rather than personal purposes and is compliance related. The main idea is that this is done to ensure there are enough checks and balances built in the system to prevent any internal fraud (incidents like these have happened to the tune of billions of dollars in the past). - If the employee is involved in some kind of fraudulent or dubious activities, then the absence of the employee during that time and a team mate handling his share of work would expose the same during the course of 10 working days of absence. This is the reason its also called compliance and is mandatory and every employee needs to take it every year.
Of course all the Banks promote it as the organization wanting the employee to have personal time.
US BB IB - 10-12 paid days off plus market holidays. You are encouraged to use 1 full week and maybe a few long weekends, but unusual for a junior to take 2 full weeks off unless the second is the week between Christmas and New Years. Have to ask for days off many months in advance, have had some not approved because others were taking time off at the same time. Good news is working is highly discouraged on vacation - should check email a few times a day just to forward anything urgent to the right person, but no work expected. Think this is a pretty typical experience in the US, Europe is very different with vacation policies.
Friends in corp dev have similar # of days off but use all of them.
Good to know thank you
This is team dependent for sure. Most banks are not this generous and certain corp dev industries are less likely to allow a full 2 weeks off straight depending on capacity and heat of market
What are you talking about?
this isn’t generous at all. A week off in the summer and one around the holidays is pretty standard
Interned in Corp Dev at a large tech company and pretty much everyone took 1-2 weeks off at some point in the summer. Head of the group worked a bit during their vacation.
CB at a European Bank. Get 30 days a year + can roll over 30 days since I’m in California, plus 10-12 holidays (some are floating, some I’m not sure if they will continue; e.g. Juneteenth as a floating holiday this year we can take whenever).
If I take less than a week I’m still pretty plugged in, so I try and take more extended breaks where I can handoff anything live. Also I try and go to Asia so that I’m really unplugged due to the time zone.
We have a sabbatical program also which you’re eligible for after 5 years. You get 1 month paid and then 2-5 unpaid but off work. I’m planning on taking a few months to 1) go on MBA trips with the fiancée, 2) get married and 3) honeymoon
My former firm (IB RX with distressed credit arm, SEA based), gives 12 days of leave that's rolled over until June of each year. So effectively i was given 18 days of leave per year (The previous year full 12 and the current year pro rata each month).
Taking a leave was the only real time-off you get realistically within my group. As working on weekends IS the norm and are expected (even encouraged) by my MD IF there are pending deliverables (which we often does).
In return he will not prioritize face-time and would straight up cover for you if you have attendance issues. To summarize, i was expected being reachable 24/7 but also given the illusion of freedom of not having to go to the office nor even seeing other coworker pretty much ever if the work does not require that.
As you can probably realize, nobody in the right mind wanted to stay within that group except for money. The bonus comes in this month and already my former colleagues are asking if i know any job openings within the industry.
American EB in London - on paper 4 weeks off in practice reachable at all times
On the junior side Anas/Assos are encouraged to take time off but these often blow up due to deals
On the senior side, MDs / partners are also always on
I think the issue is as you move up to VP/Dir/MD it’s not realistic to have a peer covering for your deals and clients want you to be driving the project ..
so yes basically holidays means working from the beach
As a junior, there is no reason why a deal should blow up your vacation. It's really just a sign of terrible culture if your associate is unable to or unwilling to cover for you while you're on vacation, no matter how busy the project is.
I should add - my firm does standard M&A but also RX - what you’re saying is probably correct for a 3 month sell-side process, not for a 12-18 month restructuring where there’s so much embedded knowledge you just can’t swap and it’s a matter of life and death for the client
What? That's not what anyone is saying.
If the analyst is out, the associate can just do the work that they would otherwise pass on to the analyst...
Complete failure of middle level people on the deal team if only the analyst knows what's going on.
Thanks for your insight on middle level people performance
I’m relaying how it works at my firm, if you’ve been able to take 100% of your holidays undisturbed good for you but that’s not been my experience
And no it doesn’t mean only the analyst knows what’s going on
Just an example, but when you work on a restructuring and the emergency funding you needed just fell through and you need to go back to the drawing board before creditors take the keys I can assure you no one cares that Johnny analyst 2 had planned a week off with his gf that week
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