Which investment banks should I apply to in 2012-2013?

28/4/2012

by Girl Banker®

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Good question. There are lots of investment banks out there. Some that you have heard of and some that you haven't. In To Become an Investment Banker, I take you through some criteria that you should look at in deciding where to apply:

Deal flow
Size of the firm by employees or market cap
The product focus of the firm
The geographical locations of the firm
Diversity of the firm
The team

I think deal flow is the single most important factor. Why? The more transactions you work on the more likely you are to get paid well, the better your resumé/CV looks, the more people you get to meet. Let's look at each of these factors in turn:

Getting paid
Working in an investment bank is hard work. If you manage to get into one of the top banks you will be working with some of the brightest people in the world. You need to justify your existence. The profitability of the transactions that you work on will form the basis of how much you get paid. The more deal flow your firm gets, the more likely you are to land on a good transaction.

Building a fantastic résumé / CV
The market value of an investment banker is based on the transactions they have worked on. The deals you work on determine a) your value inside your bank and b) your reputation and value outside the bank. The more deals you get to experience, the more valuable you become.

Meeting people
The more people you work with, the more you open yourself up to opportunities. Many deals involve several banks working together alongside lawyers and possibly accountants. All the people that you get exposed to help to build up your brand. The higher your firm's deal flow, the more opportunities you will have for 'branding' yourself.

Okay, so where is all the deal flow? In To Become an Investment Banker you will find a league table for the top 50 banks in All Corporate Bonds Issues in 2011. I chose this over the equity table (also in the book) because it included a much larger volume of deals.

You can find the same information below. For ease of navigation, I divided the list into 'Top 20' and 'Next 30' then ordered each list alphabetically. This list will be refreshed annually. You will find links that take you directly to the careers section of every investment bank here.

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Top 20

Next 30

Bank of America Merrill Lynch
Barclays Capital
BNP Paribas Group
Citi
Credit Agricole
Credit Suisse
Deutsche Bank
Goldman Sachs
HSBC
Intesa Sanpaolo
JP Morgan
Mizuho Financial Group
Morgan Stanley
RBC Capital Markets
RBS
Societe Generale
UBS
UniCredit
Wells Fargo
WestLB

Agricultural Bank of China
ANZ Banking Group
Banco Popolare
Bank of China
BayernLB
BBVA
BMO Capital Markets
China Construction Bank
China International Capital
CIBC
CITIC Securities
Commerzbank
Commonwealth Bank Australia
Daiwa Securities Group
DZ Bank
Industrial & Comm Bank of China
ING Groep
LBBW
Helaba
Mitsubishi UFJ
National Australia Bank
Natixis
Nomura
NORD/LB
Santander
Scotia Capital
Standard Chartered
Sumitomo Mitsui FG
TD Securities
Westpac Banking

Who is Girl Banker® and how can she help you?

2 Comments

Girl Banker®

I created my investment banking blog in 2012 as soon as I resigned from i-banking & published my book, To Become An Investment Banker.

Initially published at girlbanker.com, all posts were later subsumed into my personal website under katsonga.com/GirlBanker.

With 7 years of front office i-banking experience from Goldman Sachs and HSBC, in both classic IBD (corporate finance) and Derivatives (DCM / FICC), the aim of GirlBanker.com was to make it as straight-forward as possible to get into a top tier investment bank.

I'm also a CFA survivor having passed all three levels on the first attempt within 18 months - the shortest time possible.

ChampDeVecteur

11/8/2016 12:46:08 pm

Hi,

you are absolutely sure, that for example BBVA or Nord/LB ( which was one of the few banks failing on the not that hard stress test of 2011-July ) are better than any of the Northern-European or even Austrian banks ( Nordea, S.E.B, or Rabobank or Raiffeisen International ) ?

Heather as "Girl Banker"

11/8/2016 12:46:30 pm

Hi ChampDeVecteur,

Thanks for your comment. Your question is a very good and interesting one:

Yes I am sure. Note that where a company falls in a league table very much depends on which League Table you look at. This is the 2011 League Table for all Corporate Bond Issues. I preferred it over the equity one. The data was collected in Mar-12 so holding constant any corrections since then:

Nord LB is no. 36 in this table with 91 bond issues and 0.5% of the market share.
Nordea is no. 52 in this table with 126 bond issues but only 0.3% of the market share.
Raiffeissen is no. 53 in this table also with 126 bond issues and only 0.3% of the market share.
SEB is no. 56 in this table with 176 bond issues and also 0.3% of the market share.
So these guys were actually doing more bond issues than Nord LB but of a smaller size.

If I look at the equity table for ‘Global Equity, Equity Linked & Rights’ over the same period, Nord LB and Raiffeissen are not even there because they don’t do equity (haven’t verified this). SEB is no. 54, Nordea is like number 158.

At first, I was going to give the period Nov-10 to Nov-11 and it gets pretty interesting. Nord LB is like no. 34 in this table, Nordea is 55, Raiffeissen is 50 and SEB is 51.

Note that the above subsets ‘Top 20’ and ‘Next 30’ are in alphabetical order. In my book the proper order is provided.
I wish you luck and encourage you to purchase ‘To Become an Investment Banker’!

Thanks
GB

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