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mrb87:

1) As a syndicate analyst you will be tracking investor orders in deals. Pivots are therefore important since you will be keeping a running database of deals -- you'll be able to see what deals each investor participated in, how much they ordered and how much they actually received. If your database is robust enough -- and it should be -- you'll be able to see who the top investors are for specific companies, industries, bond tenors (i.e. the buyer base of 3yr FRNs is different than for 10yr fixed), etc... and you can use this information to efficiently market new issues.

2) Functions shouldn't be much complicated than lookups, sumif, sumproduct and match functions. Pretty simple stuff overall.

3) Traditional modelling will be non-existent. You won't be digging into company financials but you'll want to be able to have spreadsheets that have comparable bonds issues with their different spreads, prices and yields, and you'll also want spreadsheets that make it easy to price new deals. That said, I'm 10000% sure the syndicate desk will already have these. From there, once you become comfortable with them, you'll want to figure out ways to improve them.

Honestly, an analyst in syndicate is a glorified travel agent and admin. But the hours are great.

Second that. In the Canadian space it probably won't even be that that difficult (in regards to bullet 1) as it's not a huge space with a ton of players so you can typically just pull a buyers list from a couple of precedent deals.

RustyR:

Thank you @mrb87 and @juniormistmaker

1. Creating pivot tables and searching pivot tables using filter etc is not particularly difficult. Infact, it sounds too easy to be true. Any specific functionality of pivot tables I should know other than this?

2. Basic of use of those functions are simple enough!

3. Modelling: Traditional modelling obviously is irrelevant to the syndicate desk. The job requirement stated that modelling skills will be an asset. I can value bonds in excel using present value by a simple creation of discounting formulas but what about using comparables? Is there a specific name for bond modelling using comparables? I am unable to find any info on this online!

Thanks for the help!

It's not "bond modelling"; you're just using comps to help zero in in the appropriate spread/yield for a new issue.