A week in the life: Investment Banking Analyst
For I-banking analysts, it’s all about the computer screen. Analysts, especially those in their first year, spend countless hours staring at their computer monitors and working until midnight or all night. Building models, creating “comps,” (see sidebar) and editing pitchbooks fills the majority of their time. Many analysts do nothing but put together pitchbooks, and never see the light of day. Hard working and talented analysts, however, tend to find their way out of the office and become involved in meetings related to live transactions.
A typical week for an analyst might involve the following:
Monday
Up at 7:30 a.m. Monday morning, the analyst makes it into the office by 9. Mornings often move at a snail’s pace, so the analyst builds a set of comparable company analysis (a.k.a. comps, see sidebar) and then updates the latest league table data, which track how many deals I-banks have completed. Lunch is a leisurely forty-five minutes spent with other analysts at a deli a few blocks away. The afternoon includes a conference call with a company considering an IPO, and at 5, a meeting with a VP who drops a big model on the analyst’s lap. Dinner is delivered at 8 and paid for by the firm, but this is no great joy – it is going to be a late night because of the model. At midnight, the analyst has reached a stopping point and calls a car service to give him a free ride home.
Tuesday
The next day is similar, but the analyst spends all day working on a pitchbook for a meeting on Wednesday that a banker has set up. Of course, the banker waited until the day before the meeting to tell the analyst about it. After working all night and into the morning, including submitting numerous changes to the 24-hour word processing department, the analyst finally gets home at 5 a.m., which gives him enough time for a two-hour nap, a shower, and a change of clothes.
Wednesday
Unfortunately, there is a scheduled drafting session out of town on Wednesday relating to another transaction, and the flight is at 8 a.m. Having slept only two hours, the analyst reads his draft of the prospectus on the plane, and arrives with a VP at the law firm’s office at 11 a.m., armed with some comments to point out to the group. Many hours and coffees later, the VP and analyst get back on the plane, where the analyst falls dead asleep. After the flight touches down, the analyst returns to the office at 8 p.m. – and continues modeling for a few hours. At midnight, the analyst heads home.
Thursday
The analyst is roped into doing another pitchbook, this one for a merger deal. He frantically works to complete a merger model: gathering information, keying in data, and working with an associate looking over his shoulder. By the time he and the associate have finished the analysis, it is 1 a.m.
Friday
Friday is even worse. The merger model is delivered to the hands of the senior VP overseeing the work, but returned covered in red ink. Changes take the better part of the day, and progress is slow. Projections have to be rejiggered, more research found, and new companies added to the list of comps. At 7 p.m. on Friday, the analyst calls his friends to tell them he won’t make it out tonight – again. At 11 p.m., he heads home.
Saturday
Even Saturday requires nearly 10 hours of work, but much of the afternoon the analyst waits by the phone to hear from the VP who is looking at the latest version of the models.
Sunday
No rest on Sunday. This day involves checking some numbers, but the afternoon, thankfully, is completely free for some napping and downtime.
The analyst adds up a total of maybe 90 hours this week. It could have been much worse: at some firms, analysts typically work more than 100 hours per week.
A Day in the Life: Investment Banking Associate
We’ve asked insiders at leading investment banks to offer us insight into a day in the life of their position. Here’s a look at a day of an associate I-banker at Goldman Sachs.
8:15 Arrive at 85 Broad Street. (Show Goldman ID card to get past the surly elevator guards).
8:25 Arrive on 17th Floor. Use “blue card” to get past floor lobby. (“Don’t ever forget your blue card. Goldman has tight security and you won’t be able to get around the building all day.”)
8:45 Pick up work from Word Processing, review it, make changes.
9:00 Check voice mail, return phone calls. 9:30 Eat breakfast; read The Wall Street Journal. (“But don’t let a supervisor see you with your paper sprawled across your desk.”)
10:00 Prepare pitchbooks, discuss analysis with members of deal team.
12:00 Conference call with members of IPO team, including lawyers and client.
1:00 Eat lunch at desk. (“The Wall Street McDonald’s delivers, but it’s the most expensive McDonald’s in New York City; Goldman’s cafeteria is cheaper, but you have to endure the shop talk.”)
2:00 Work on restructuring case studies; make several document requests from Goldman library.
3:00 Start to prepare analysis; order additional data from DRG (Data Resources Group).
5:00 Check in with vice presidents and heads of deal teams on status of work.
6:00 Go to gym for an abbreviated workout.
6:45 Dinner. (“Dinner is free in the IBD cafeteria, but avoid it. Wall Street has pretty limited food options, so for a quick meal it’s the Indian place across the street that’s open 24 hours.”)
8:00 Meet with VP again. (“You’ll probably get more work thrown at you before he leaves.”)
9:45 Try to make FedEx cutoff. Drop off pitchbook to Document Processing on 20th Floor. (“You have to call ahead and warn them if you have a last-minute job or you’re screwed.”)
10:00 Order in food again. (“It’s unlikely that there will be any room left in your meal allowance — but we usually order in a group and add extra names to bypass the limit.”)
11:00 Leave for home. (“Call for a car service. Enjoy your nightly meal on wheels’ on the way home.”)
A Day in the Life: Investment Banking Research Associate
Investment Banking Research Associate, Deutsche Bank Equity Research
6:30 a.m.: Wake up. (“Unfortunately, working in research, you have to get up pretty early.”)
7:30: Arrive at work. (“First thing I do is check NewsEdge, CNN and CNBC, see what’s going on, what’s happening politically to affect my coverage. You can listen to the morning call, which starts everyday at 7:15 and lasts until 8, but I only listen if my boss will be on it, or if there’s breaking news in our sector.”)
8:00: Coffee with boss and group. (“We’ll sit down and talk about the news, discuss the market and plan our day.”)
9:00: Listen to earnings call (company you cover releases earnings, quarterly or annual), followed by Q&A with the firm that released the call. (“If you have crucial questions to ask a company, now you have to pose them in a public forum because of the regulatory concerns.”)
11:00: Begin to write first call note (your firm’s investment thesis on the company that released the call). Open up Excel and update financial model for note. U.S. sales force starts to call. (“Clients will call asking you what you think of the results of the call –Do you think estimates will rise? What’s the stock going to do? Basically, we tell them what we think thus far –where the company’s weaknesses and strengths are.”) (“Quarterly earnings releases take 2-3 pages. If the investment thesis is new, we create new text. I f we stay with the same viewpoint, we still have to add new content to support that viewpoint. We aim to get the note out before the end of the trading day. If the call takes place during the day, and you’re a good analyst, your note should be out at least by first thing in the morning.”)
12:00 p.m.: Lunch. (“Almost everyday, we go out as a team: We usually grab a salad, bring it back and sit at my boss’ desk to get caught up. And we don’t just talk about business.”)
1:00: Finalize marketing presentation for an investor meeting with a potential client (company you might cover). (“Put in detail behind the company’s industry, our viewpoints, public trading performance, historical valuations, how they compare, snapshots. Put in a lot of elaborate charts and graphs. The thing is more a take home pack, rather than an outline for the meeting.”)
2:00: Meeting out of office. (“At the meetings, associates are almost spectators. They only talk if somebody asks something like, ‘Can I clarify what the percent of geographic sales is?’ Meetings usually include a salesperson, an analyst and an associate on our side.”)
4:00: Back in office. Continue on first call. (“After you update it, you show it to your analyst [your boss], who will ask you to add some things. This then gets sent out in hard copy format. It may take a while to move it through the necessary compliance channels and get it out the door.”)
5:00: Boss leaves.
7:30: Leave for the day. (“The earliest I usually leave is 7:30 or 8. In the summer, though, I can leave earlier. And during earnings season, I usually leave later, because there’s can be two or three earnings releases in one day, so you have to get that many first call notes out each day. It can get stressful: three notes, three models –and fielding clients from everywhere.”)
A Day in the Life: Investment Research Associate (2)
Investment Research Associate, Major Mutual Fund Firm
7:00 a.m.: Arrive at the office.
7:01: Read The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times, paying particular attention to articles about the industry you follow.
7:30: Listen to morning call voice mails from sell-side analysts. (“Each sell-side firm has a morning meeting, and the highlights are sent via the institutional salesperson to their asset management clients.”)
8:00: Attend the morning investment meeting. (“Most firms have a daily meeting where all analyst and portfolio managers gather to relay new information, initiate stock recommendations and discuss current market changes.”)
9:00: Listen to a company’s investment conference call (“particularly during earnings reposting season. These calls usually include updates from the CEO and CFO on operating performance, strategic initiatives and future company expectations.”)
9:45: Open the stack of reports in your inbox. Study the latest industry press and investment literature to identify new trends that may impact the companies you follow.
10:30: Phone industry analysts and company management with follow-up questions.
^ 11:00: Meet with your research associate to discuss potential changes that need to be made to financial models and investment recommendations based on new information gathered during the morning’s activities
12:00 p.m.: Eat lunch while attending an industry conference or a meeting with sell-side analysts. (“These are great ways to gather new insights and meet with industry players in a less formal setting.”)
1:30: Continue working on the written investment analysis of the company you are going to initiate coverage on the next day. (“This is the culmination of a two-week process in which you met with management of the company, visited the two largest manufacturing facilities, spoke with large customers of the company and conducted surveys on the demand expectations of their new product line.”)
2:45: Take a phone call from a senior portfolio manager who wants to discuss in more detail the investment report you issued last week on XYZ Company. (“Specifically, he wants additional support for why you believe earnings will fall 12 percent when the company has stated they expect only a 6-8 percent decline.”)
3:15: Sit down to write the final recommendation summary for the company you will initiate coverage on the next morning.
4:00: Review the day’s trading activity to see how your industry performed, again paying particular attention to the company you are initiating coverage on. (“If the investment team likes the idea, they will be paying close attention to the recent trading performance of the stock.”)
4:30: Meet with your research associate to put the finishing touches on the PowerPoint presentation that you will use to pitch the new stock the following morning. (“You identify a few changes to the slides and decide to cut out a few pages, remember that portfolio managers do not want to be inundated with information; they only want the necessary facts and the pertinent details that support your recommendation.”)
5:30: Check the newswires and first-call notes for any after-hours company news.
6:00: Head to the gym (“for a quick workout to clear your head. Hopefully there is a workout facility in the building.”)
7:00: Return to the office to run through the final PowerPoint slides and to make sure the initiation report is on the top of each portfolio manager’s inbox.
7:45: Leave for home.
A Day in the Life: Investment Banking Sales
Here’s a look at a day in the life of a sales associate in the Fixed Income division at Bear Stearns in New York.
6:45 Get to work. (“I try to get in around 6:45. Sometimes it’s 7:00.)
6:50 After checking e-mail and voice mail, start looking over The Wall Street Journal. (“I get most of my sales ideas from The Wall Street Journal. I’d say 70 to 75 percent of my ideas. I also read the Economist, Business Week, just for an overview, some Barron’s and the Financial Times. Maybe three issues out of the five for the week for FT.”)
7:15 Start checking Bloombergs, getting warmed up, going over your ideas and figuring out where things stand.
7:45 Meet with your group in a conference room for a brief meeting to go over stuff. (“We go over the traders’ axe [what the traders will focus on that day], go over research, what the market quotes are on a particular issue.”)
8:15 Get back to desk, and get ready to start pitching ideas.
9:15 Have a short meeting with your smaller group.
10:00 One of your clients calls to ask about bonds from a particular company. You tell her you’ll get right back to her. Walk over to talk to an analyst who covers that company. (“I’m in contact a lot with my analyst. I listen to my analyst.”)
10:15 Back on the horn with your client.
12:30 Run out to lunch with another salesperson from your group. (“We often buy each other lunch. Sometimes to celebrate a big deal we’ll order in lunch. We usually go to Little Italy Pizza Place, or Cosi’s Sandwiches. It’s always the same people, and it’s always the same six places.”)
1:00 Back at your desk, check voice mail. (“If I leave for 30 minutes or so, when I get back, I’ll have five messages.)
2:00 One of your clients wants to make a move. (“I trade something every day. Maybe anywhere from one to 10 trades. It’s on a rolling basis. You plant seeds, and maybe someday one of them grows into a trade.”)
3:15 Another client calls and wants to place an order.
5:30 Still on the phone. (“Although the markets close, that’s when you can really take the time to talk about where things are and why you think someone should do something.”)
7:30 Head for home, you’re meeting a client for a late dinner. (“Often on Thursdays we go out as a group.”)
A Day in the Life: Investment Banking Senior Associate
We’ve asked insiders at leading investment banks to offer us insight into a day in the life of their position. Here’s a look at a day of a senior associate at a major investment bank.
6:00 a.m.: Wake up.
6:30 a.m.: Jump into car to go to the airport.
7:00 a.m.: Meet MD in line and take shuttle [from New York] to Boston for client meeting, lugging eight books.
9:30 a.m.: Pitch client with a few M&A ideas and some financing strategy, stumbling a bit in part of the pitch, so the MD helps out.
11:00 a.m.: Drive high speed back to the airport to catch 11:30 a.m. shuttle.
11:28 a.m.: Make flight by two minutes.
1:00 p.m.: Back in office. Call desktop support because BlackBerry and cell phone are acting weird again, then quickly clean out e-mail inbox.
1:30 p.m.: Conference call (running customer due diligence for a deal).
2:30 p.m.: Meet with first-year associate and analyst to go over follow-up from the morning meeting. Give them an outline so they can start working on modeling/presentation.
3:00 p.m.: Call a few clients to see what’s new.
5:00 p.m.: Do some work on filing for a deal, and schedule the next drafting session.
8:00 p.m.: Do some work on various other pitches.
10:00 p.m.: Leave and meet boyfriend for late dinner. Spend part of dinner on now-fixed BlackBerry and cell, going over various issues with associate and analyst.
