writing abillity required in investment banking
how much writing is involved as analyst, associate, vp, etc...?
how much writing is involved as analyst, associate, vp, etc...?
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Write powerpoint and excel stuff. aka not complete sentences, but dont sound retarded
I like the obvious misspelling in the title ("abillity").
ya.. how bout pitchbooks??? doesn't that involve a lot of writing?
Yes there is a lot of writing. Not as much as a lawyer or a journalist but there is enough that you will look like a total dumb ass if you misspell words and/or write in "children."
This is with ANY career (emailing, memos etc) so if your writing sucks then get on top of that shit. CEO's and top executives are all dominant writers and they all comment that this is one of the most important "intangibles" that is seriously lacking in the business school education.
You will have to write MORE at the associate or VP level (i.e. in pitchbooks etc when you are summarizing an industry/competitive advantage/competitor analysis or some othe rtype of to-down evaluation).
However, you will write very little at the analyst level (at least writing that clients will see).
if they don't do pitchbooks, what exactly do they do then other than updating data etc.
number crunching...
Normalizing all the data that goes into valuation anlysis (turning the Bullshit that the company execs provide in the financial statements into bullshit that the MD's provide in valuation analysis).
Constructing the valuation models based on those inputs (with tons of extras...synergies, acretion/dilution analysis etc etc etc)
Finding good comps to present (or at least comps that fit within the valuation range that your VP demands).
Making your respective bank the number one in league tables.
All of this is within pitchbooks and presentations so you will be doing a lot of the pitch book stuff....just not the writing/commentary that the VPs and Associates will "filling-in" b/w all of your analysis.
so would you guys recommend on taking a business writing course in university, or just reading newspaper, magazines, books is good enough.
Do all the above. Instead of taking a wastefull elective for an easy A, take a business writing/communications course (still an easy A and it will help you for your entire career!)
The hire you move up in ANY career, the more imperitive your writing skills become.
I doubt this. The execs I know don't write shit.
Wow, know alot of execs huh? What exactly do these "execs" do?
Clearly you have no idea what you are talking about. Please shut up.
Yes it is imperative to improve your writing skills.
I wonder if Bananalyst was being sarcastic. "Hire" and "imperitive" are rather egregious. Not that I am error-less myself.
Strunk and White should accompany the HP12Cs during summer training.
Being a crisp, artful writer is the single biggest differentiating point between being a good analyst/associate and a great analyst/associate.
You will not succeed above this level without such writing capabilities.
How come writing skills are so overlooked in banking? (Originally Posted: 05/25/2011)
Everyone is crazy about modeling yet let's face it, junior bankers spend no more than 15% on modeling. It seems that of all tasks, writing/editing consume the bulk of time. How come writing is so overlooked?
I just got a memo from a junior banker and it looks absolutely horrible.
interested as well...it seems M&I and other sites don't discuss much about the writing involved in an IB analyst (or associate, etc.) job.
Agree. I'm good with numbers but not good at all with writing, especially in English (not my mother tongue). As an intern I found myself most of the time building offering memos and pitchbooks with slides from scratch, and believe me it was a hard time. After a while I learned the 20 adjectives and 100 sentences that bankers repeat all the time to describe companies, but at the beginning I had a really hard time putting decent slides together and felt like I was only good with charts and maps. Fortunately most of the time VPs write slides content so it's not my job to create that. And it's better when it's like that because you learn after reading the whole time the same sentences and I can perfectly see myself putting all those slides with baller sentences after 6 years doing banking every day of my life. Writing banking stuff becomes natural I guess.
If you ARE good at writing, does that put you at any kind of advantage in IB? Or is like being really good at photocopying and fixing printers?
"I Don't Write Shit Cause I Ain't Got Time"
I guess that means lil wayne prefers modeling over writing
cuz language on pitches is incredibly generic and picking up the few generic phrases used in every pitch is very straightforward.
also because an incorrect word doesn't change prices by hundreds of millions, an incorrect model does.
Leveredarb, I would contend to you that all models are incorrect.
All models are wrong, some are useful.
If you want to write more than one sentence at a time and use a vocabulary >100 words go into law, not banking
PPT doesnt leave much room for loquaciousness
However, just because you dont write much in banking doesnt mean writing skills are not important - you need to be concise and convincing
[quote=
However, just because you dont write much in banking doesnt mean writing skills are not important - you need to be concise and convincing[/quote]
Dont write much? CIM's, Committee memos, Internal deal announcements, Salesforce memos, drafting sessions...the list goes on and on. You write a lot in banking - more so than building models...
This.
When I was putting together pages last summer, we did a lot of copying and pasting. I feel like not much original prose went into the books.
I know. When I interviewed for Credit Agricole, I mentioned the fact that I am a published writer in law journals and the comment was completely overlooked.
Being able to write well and being able to write well for banking are two very different things. If you can do the first, you can make the second happen, if you can do the second, doesn't mean shit about the first.
The reason that writing skills are not valued in the interview process is because they look at writing as a higher valued added activity. You are only getting hired to crank (or so they think). That said, being a good writer is very helpful as an analyst. Everyone gets ramped up on modeling eventually but I think your writing skills are mostly baked in by the time you get to that age. Being a good writer (or more importantly, a fast one) will make your life so much easier when it comes to pitchbooks and memos. Very underrated skill in banking. One piece of advice, if you are more of a qualitative/writer type of person, go for an industry group.
know how to write emails to ppl above you in a respectful tone. know how to ask for information without sounding like a dick with your fellow analysts over email. Learn how to plagerize long sections of other ppls work (it's efficient) - industry guys mostly do this. Puting together books and emails is where the writing comes in.
Your cover letter gives a bunch of clues as to your writing ability. If you are asking do you have to write well as if you were writing the great american novel, the answer is no. Just know how to express yourself and you will do fine.
Look, the point that I was trying to make has been drastically misunderstood. The original claim made by Bananalyst was the higher you move up the more imperative writing ability comes. I agree that writing is important, but I still contend that this statement does not hold true at higher levels. While writing can play an important role in your ascension to the top, once you are at the top, it really doesn't matter.
you need to be able to communicate verbally and in writing. you need to have common sense. you need to have a good logical way of approach shit.
it is important. you cannot survive with poor writing skills.
Writing skills here for most of my colleagues suck because English is not their first language. Many local Asian firms have an editor, the company for which I work for has one as well. There have been complaints by our Editor that the Head of Research has bad english, which I agree as I'm almost always the one the Editor comes to for help in decoding what my boss has written. The writing is so jumbled and confusing on many occasions that I've recently given up helping out our editor. Of course it's true that once you're at the top, writing is no longer important...what's important at that stage is how well you interact with clients as your employees will be the ones doing the writing. In particular, the editors will be the ones stuck trying to polish up the exec's crappy writing.
writing's pretty important even though general perception that banking is a number crunching job, i had to write client updates as a SA every week - what you send out is on behalf of firm so poor grammar/syntax just don't cut it. MD at end of program gave feedback that ability to write is one of main things that differentiate full time offer or not.
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