Careers

Every bank uses roughly the same five rungs. What changes as you climb is not the hours so much as the job - from producing the work, to checking it, to managing it, to selling the next deal - and the pay curve bends sharply at the point where the job becomes selling.

1. 01 the five rungs
2. 02 moving up
3. 03 how the pay works
4. 04 pay in london and europe
5. 05 hours, and the rules on them

An investment banking division is cut two ways at once. Coverage groups own a sector's clients and pitch them; product groups own a type of transaction and execute it across every sector. Which of them you join changes the work and the exits more than it changes the hours or the pay. Each product group - and financial institutions coverage (FIG & FS Deals) - has its own page below.

1. 01 the wall: private side and public side
2. 02 coverage and product
3. 03 the coverage groups
4. 04 choosing a group

• m&a
• ecm
• dcm & leveraged finance
• restructuring
• fig & fs deals

Investment banking is the part of the bank people apply to; sales and trading is often the larger business. It buys and sells securities for investors rather than advising companies, and the work, the hours, the pay and the interviews are all different.

1. 01 how big it is
2. 02 who does what
3. 03 the hours and the pay
4. 04 recruiting and the interview
5. 05 choosing between trading and banking

The part of a universal bank that lends to companies and runs their cash. It sits next to investment banking and feeds it clients, and the job differs from it in almost every way that matters to a candidate.

1. 01 the role
2. 02 credit and the lender's return
3. 03 pay and hours
4. 04 getting in
5. 05 exits

A bank is more than the people who advise, sell and trade. These six functions sit around the front office. Each section says what the job is, how people get in and where it leads,.

1. 01 risk
2. 02 compliance
3. 03 operations and middle office
4. 04 technology
5. 05 quants and strats
6. 06 sell-side research

The part of a bank that manages and advises on the money of wealthy individuals and families. It is a relationship job.

1. 01 the role
2. 02 getting in
3. 03 where it leads

The questions students ask most often about banking - how hard it is, how much of it is maths, what it does to a private life, whether consulting is better, and whether age, grades or the lack of an MBA rule you out. The answers draw on a practitioner's guide and are checked against current sources where the facts have moved.

1. 01 the work
2. 02 hours and life
3. 03 banking or consulting
4. 04 getting in: the awkward questions

Most analysts do not stay in banking, and the jobs they leave for are the reason many of them joined. Each exit trades something - pay, hours, the kind of work, how easy it is to move again - and the most talked-about one is the hardest to get.

1. 01 when people leave
2. 02 private equity, growth and venture
3. 03 hedge funds and asset management
4. 04 corporate development and corporate finance
5. 05 leaving finance

The exit most analysts aim for. A private equity fund raises money from investors, buys companies with it and a lot of debt, and sells them a few years later. It hires most of its juniors from banks, on a calendar that in the US has run absurdly far ahead of the job.

1. 01 what a fund is
2. 02 the european market in 2025
3. 03 on-cycle recruiting in the us
4. 04 recruiting in london and europe
5. 05 the interviews

The half of the buy side that invests in traded securities rather than whole companies. Asset managers run most of the money; hedge funds pay more, hire more juniors, and keep them less securely.

1. 01 what they are
2. 02 the strategies that want bankers
3. 03 getting in, and what it is like