Architect of billion-dollar deals.
Investment banking is one of the most prestigious and demanding careers in finance. Bankers advise corporations, governments, and institutions on their most complex financial decisions, raising capital, merging with competitors, acquiring companies, or going public. The work is intellectually rigorous and relentlessly demanding.
Year 1
£70K-£130K
Base: £50K-£70K
Bonus: £15K-£60K
Year 3
£140K-£210K
Base: £90K-£120K
Bonus: £50K-£90K
Senior
£330K-£700K+
Base: £180K-£300K
Bonus: £150K-£400K
London figures, carried across as a starting point. Correct these in the admin editor as needed.
Weekly Hours
80-100 hrs/week
Lifestyle
Fast-paced · High hours · High reward
Buy-Side vs Sell-Side
Investment banking is classic sell-side, you're selling services (advice, financing) to corporate clients. Buy-side firms (PE, hedge funds, asset managers) are your clients or competitors. Most bankers eventually exit to buy-side roles, where compensation is higher but entry is harder.
M&A (Mergers & Acquisitions)
Advise companies on buying, selling, or merging with other companies. You build complex valuation models, manage due diligence, negotiate deal terms, and coordinate with lawyers, accountants, and management teams over multi-month deal processes. Deals can range from £50M mid-market transactions to £50B+ megamergers.
ECM (Equity Capital Markets)
Help companies raise money by issuing shares, either through IPOs (listing on a stock exchange for the first time) or follow-on offerings. You coordinate with research, syndicate, and legal teams to price and place shares with institutional investors.
DCM (Debt Capital Markets)
Help companies and governments raise money by issuing bonds or loans. You structure the financing, set pricing, and place debt with fixed income investors. Heavy interaction with credit rating agencies and institutional bond buyers.
Leveraged Finance
Finance acquisitions (particularly for private equity firms) using high-yield debt and leveraged loans. This sits at the intersection of M&A and DCM and is one of the most analytically intense and well-paid sub-groups.
Restructuring
Advise distressed companies or their creditors on fixing broken capital structures: debt renegotiations, bankruptcies and debt-for-equity swaps. Counter-cyclical, busiest during downturns. Extremely specialised and well-paid.
Sector Coverage Groups
Most banks organise by industry, Technology, Healthcare, Financial Institutions, Real Estate, Energy, Consumer. Coverage bankers maintain long-term client relationships and bring in deals, then work with product teams (M&A, ECM, DCM) to execute.
Route In
Spring week (Sep–Nov apps) → Summer internship (penultimate year) → Graduate Analyst scheme
Technical Topics Tested
Sample Interview Questions
Walk me through a DCF.
Structure it in 5 steps: 1) Project free cash flows for 5-10 years, 2) Calculate terminal value (Gordon Growth or exit multiple), 3) Discount everything back at WACC, 4) Sum to get Enterprise Value, 5) Subtract net debt to get Equity Value. Don't just list steps, briefly explain WHY each step exists. Common mistakes: using Net Income instead of FCF, forgetting to subtract CapEx, confusing EV and equity value.
If the Fed raises interest rates, how does that affect a company's valuation?
Higher rates → higher WACC (discount rate) → lower present value of future cash flows → lower DCF valuation. Also: higher rates increase cost of debt, compress EBITDA multiples (markets re-price growth at higher rates), and hurt highly leveraged companies most. Show you understand the second-order effects, don't just say 'valuation goes down'.
What happens to EPS if a company acquires another using all debt?
This is an accretion/dilution question. If the after-tax cost of debt (interest rate × (1 - tax rate)) is LESS than the target's earnings yield (EPS / price), the deal is accretive, EPS goes up. Debt is cheaper than equity (no share dilution), so all-debt deals are more likely to be accretive than all-equity deals. Structure your answer: 1) state the principle, 2) show the maths, 3) note caveats (leverage risk, deal premiums).
IB is one of the most structured recruiting pipelines in finance. The key insight: most full-time offers come from summer internships, and most summer internships come from spring weeks. You need to start in Year 1 of university.
Key Resources
Search these online to find them:
How to Actually Get Better
Analyst (0-3 years)
Execution-heavy. Build models, make pitchbooks, run due diligence. Learning phase.
Associate (3-6 years)
Manage analysts, client interaction, own deal workstreams. MBA or internal promote.
VP (6-10 years)
Lead deal execution, manage client relationships. Revenue accountability begins.
Director / ED (10-13 years)
Own client relationships, bring in mandates. Significant P&L responsibility.
Managing Director (13+ years)
Top of the ladder. Rainmakers. Compensation £330K-£700K+.
Excel Financial Modelling
Master DCF, LBO, merger models, and 3-statement models from scratch. BIWS and WSP courses are the gold standard. You must build models at speed under pressure.
PowerPoint Pitchbook Design
Learn to build presentation-quality slides fast. Practice formatting, alignment, and telling a story with numbers. Banks have strict style guides, learn them.
Bloomberg Terminal
Get Bloomberg Market Concepts (BMC) certification before you start. Know how to pull comps, bond data, and news efficiently, it signals genuine market interest.
Capital Structure & Accounting
Read and understand 10-Ks and annual reports fluently. Know how the income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement link together inside out.
Negotiation & Communication
Practice concise, confident verbal delivery. Bankers must distil complex analysis into 3 clear points for busy executives. Join debate clubs or Toastmasters early.
AI is automating significant portions of junior IB work, pitchbook creation, financial model templates, due diligence document review. But deal judgment, client relationships, and negotiation remain deeply human.
Tools like Harvey AI are already drafting legal documents and due diligence summaries. GPT-4 can produce first-draft pitchbook slides. Junior analyst roles will shrink in headcount, but those who remain will be expected to do more complex work faster. The relationship-driven MD role is safe for the foreseeable future.
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