2011 Investment Banking Bonus Predictions: Is the World Flat?

The World Is Flat was released in 2005, but the title applies perfectly to this year’s investment banking bonuses: just swap in “bonus” for “world.”

While we saw the apocalypse and bonus meltdowns in 2008 and 2009, 2010 brought us recovery and higher bonuses.

The economy was better, banks were hiring again, and we had crawled our way out of the recession… or had we?

If this year’s investment banking revenue is any indication, that “recovery” was overblown – because this year’s numbers will be flat, flat, and more flat if my magic 8-ball and Excel spreadsheet are even half-correct.

Bottles and Bottles? How You Really Win Clients and Land Mega-Deals as an Investment Banker

Why does the mainstream media hate Wall Street so much?

You can think of dozens of reasons, but one of the biggest is that they don’t understand what bankers really do to earn their fees.

They see news of million-dollar bonuses and assume that financiers earn those bonuses by sitting around and playing Monopoly.

But you don’t earn massive fees by playing board games all day – it’s a process that takes years, which is one reason why bankers make the money they do.

And the infamous “pitch” has very little to do with it.

Blackstone vs. Goldman vs. Evercore vs. JP Morgan: How to Decide on Summer Internship Offers

After a long and hard-fought interview season, you made it through recruiting alive and came out with 4 summer offers: Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, Evercore, and JP Morgan.

Getting them was hard enough, but now you have an even more difficult task in front of you: deciding which one to accept.

This is a complex analysis that will require years of data, math skills, and top-notch spreadsheet wizardry, so fire up Excel right now and learn how to create the model that you’ll need to make your decision.