Why is this forum titled Investment Banking, instead of Corporate Finance?

I thought it was general knowledge that brokers and traders were traditionally known as investment bankers, and those who did M&A advisory work were corporate finance bankers. For example, see the Liar's Poker reference to those who work on the trading floor and those who do not.

Anyways...any thoughts how this terminology got flipped upside down? Its the same situation at my school.

 

Bernankey, stock brokers are lower class people in finance. The reason they call themselves bankers is so that they can get a stint of the true ibankers' prestige.

Stock brokers don't even need a college degree. They just facilitate trades...glorified sales people. I've seen some pathetic brokers just call people all day long, 5 days a week.

 

This is what I'm referring to: (from Liars Poker)

"I explained to her my notion of what life should be like inside an investment bank. (The description included a big glass office, a secretary, a large expense account, and lots of meetings with captains of industry. This occupation does exist within Salomon Brothers, but it is not respected. It is called corporate finance. It is different from sales and trading, though both are generally referred to as investment banking. Gutfreund's trading floor, where stocks and bonds are bought and sold, is the rough-and-tumble center of moneymaking and risk taking. Traders have no secretaries, offices, or meetings with captains of industry. Corporate finance, which services the corporations and governments that borrow money, and that are known as "clients," is, by comparison, a refined and unworldly place. Because they don't risk money, corporate financiers are considered wimps by traders. By any standards other than those of Wall Street, however, corporate finance is still a jungle full of chest-pounding males)."

"Companies had long been the domain of commercial bankers and the corporate finance and equity departments of investment banks. They hadn't been subjected to the mental processes of a bond trader. We at Salomon, as I have said, relegated the equity department to a corner in our basement. Many of our bond traders thought of our corporate financiers as administrative assistants; their pet name for the corporate finance department was Team Xerox."

 

"Analysts didn't analyze anything. They were slaves to a team of corporate financiers, the men who did the negotiations and paper work (though not the trading and selling) of new issues of stocks and bonds for America's corporations. At Salomon Brothers they were the lowest of the low; at other banks they were the lowest of the high; in either case theirs was a miserable job. Analysts photocopied, proofread, and assembled breathtakingly dull securities documents for ninety and more hours a week. If they did this particularly well, analysts were thought well of by their bosses."

 
Best Response

I don't think this is a troll. A troll would not spend fifteen minutes typing that up. Frankly, he could be roughly as clueless as I was when I was a junior applying for jobs.

Every bank has three (ok, maybe four) major divisions:

-Trading -Research -IPOs, M&A, Secondaries, and Bond Issuance (Sometimes bonds issuance is part of trading.) -Private Wealth Management

All of these are part of an investment bank, but to deliberately make things more confusing for young college students, banks call IPOs, M&A, Secondaries, and Bonds their "Investment Banking Divison". That is where the "investment bankers" are.

At Solomon in the late 80s, the traders were at the top of the totem pole in the early 80s. The situation, however, was different in the early 80s at Lehman Brothers. And it is different in every market and a little different at every firm. The things that have stayed constant over 20 years are that traders are still very direct and uncensored, bankers still work crazy hours, and the two groups still snark at each other all the time.

 
N.R.G.:
WaterMargin:
Bernankey, stock brokers are lower class people in finance....glorified sales people.
lol Senior bankers' job has absolutely nothing to do with sales.
Really? Then how do they win mandates, brainchild? By keeping absolutely quiet and letting relationships fade away?
IlliniProgrammer:
At Solomon in the late 80s, the traders were at the top of the totem pole in the early 80s.
Your most brilliant yet, IP. =P
I am permanently behind on PMs, it's not personal.
 
A Posse Ad Esse:
N.R.G.:
WaterMargin:
Bernankey, stock brokers are lower class people in finance....glorified sales people.
lol Senior bankers' job has absolutely nothing to do with sales.
Really? Then how do they win mandates, brainchild? By keeping absolutely quiet and letting relationships fade away?
IlliniProgrammer:
At Solomon in the late 80s, the traders were at the top of the totem pole in the early 80s.
Your most brilliant yet, IP. =P

N.R.G was being sarcastic because senior bankers' jobs are entirely sales...

 

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