London IBD Associates: hours?

I'm an IBD Associate at a boutique in London and my hours on average are approximately 9am to 9pm Monday to Wednesday, 9am to 8pm on a Thursday and 10am to 6pm on a Friday with little to no weekend work other than occasionally reviewing Analyst work for a few hours on a Sunday.

I'm now interviewing with BBs/EBs and want to know the honest breakdown of what hours are like at places like these in London to see if I can mentally do it.

I feel most insight into hours on here at US driven so I'd appreciate any Associates at BBs/EBs in London providing an honest insight into their hours using the format below. Thank you.


Bank: [EU BB/US BB/EB]

Title: [Associate 1/2/3]

Monday to Wednesday: x

Thursday: x

Friday: x

Weekends: x

 
Most Helpful

Bank: EU BB

Title: Analyst 2 but averaging observation of the ASOs on team 

Monday to Thursday: 10am - 2am 

Friday: 10am - 9pm

Weekends: Highly variable (4hrs each day on avg)

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In my experience, Associates had a similiar lifestyle in terms of hours compared to Analysts. The benefit was that they largely knew what they were doing (A2As) hence there was far less stress associated with their work output but the hours were not much less. Regardless, it seems like your work hours will dramatically escalate if you leave your current boutique. 

 

I worked at an industry-focused boutique (not EB, but well-known). Associates worked more predictable hours and were less responsible for one-off senior banker or client requests, e.g. pull together a few pages for meeting tmrw, upload these files to VDR, etc. But on live deals, every time an analyst was in the trenches they had to be there - even if not in the office, if the analyst finished something at 1am on a Friday, they would have to review then or early the next morning

 

Am at a lower tier EU bank, my senior asso / junior vp constantly have to work pass 10pm weekdays and sometimes post 9pm on fridays, live deal might be more. I'd say you probably have a nice gig now, as far as I heard most of my friends' asso / junior vps work long hours too but rarely super late nights like analysts.

 

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