A Week In The Life Of An Investment Banking Analyst: Thursday
I could have called this one “The Slow Day” and it would have been more accurate. This is just about the slowest day you can have in investment banking and still call yourself a banker.
9 AM - Head in. I’ve been here for awhile now so I’ve long since stopped caring about being in “early.”
9:30 AM - Internal call to review the Purchase Agreement we received for Client B (the public company being sold to another public company) yesterday.
10 AM - Come to the realization that today may indeed be a much-anticipated “Slow Day.” There is some continued work on the presentation and Offering Memorandum for Client A and further revisions to our model for Client C (the private equity deal), but so far I’m spending most of my time shopping for furniture online.
Don’t manage to find anything good online so conclude I’ll probably have to go to a few places in-person over the weekend, assuming I have time.
3 PM - A few hours have passed and I still haven’t done much. Client C keeps sending us a stream of information throughout the day but we’re holding off updating anything until they finish. This is fine by me - I love efficiency.
6 PM - Take a nap in the sleeping room.
The sleeping room is a designated office, usually unoccupied, where Analysts take private calls (often with headhunters) and sleep under the desks if need be. It’s usually small and removed from public sight.
Note: I don’t know if this is “official lingo” – this is just what I call it. Sometimes other people in the office thought I was crazy when I used this terminology, so you may want to avoid this one.
8 PM - Wake up from my power nap. I have missed dinner once again and other Analysts ate without me. Finalize presentation for Client A (the one who sent a bunch of last-minute changes the other night and forced me to the airport) for another meeting the next day.
10 PM - Need to wake up for an 8:30 AM meeting with Client A at our office the next day, so I go home “early” and fall asleep.
This is an example of how you can have a “slow day” even in the middle of a busy week. Your workload is highly dependent on specific requests from clients as well as how many pitches you’re working on; this week is somewhat unusual in that I had almost entirely client-related work and no pitches.
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Tags: investment banker lifestyle, investment banking, investment banking analyst, M&A deals, understanding investment banking
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I was waiting expectantly for this post!! There is nothing more frustrating in banking than the “slow day”!! Ugh!!
Frustrating? Slow days were great.
At JPM there was a room on my floor (Natural Resources/FIG) the size of a closet, with no lights or windows, a chair, small desk and a telephone. Outside the door there was a sign on the wall that read “Touchdown Room”.
Haha that’s a good one. I don’t recall if ours ever had an official name…