Conventionally, investment bankers are responsible for interacting with clients, creating offers, handling financial forecasts, and managing sales books or pitch books created by the organization to aid reach new clientele.
The intensifying need for exceptional communication skills is what makes investment bankers different from financial analysts and accountants. Myriads of business students can receive investment banking certification and perform the technical responsibilities of investment banking associates, yet some possess the skill of assisting senior staff and clientele.
Morning Hours
The morning time is the most stable and is usually burdened with office meetings and administrative emails. Replying to loads of messages further adds to the stability of investment bankers’ day.
Thankfully, a majority of working days begin rather late for investment bankers, partially because the US capital markets open after 7 in the morning, and also because a majority of bankers work late at night. As such, investment bankers have enough time to get ready and have a healthy breakfast before heading to the workplace. As most of the investment-banking jobs are situated in densely populated cosmopolitan cities, investment bankers need to make ample time for the commute.
Work during morning hours is often relatively sluggish and more organized versus that during the evening. From the beginning until lunchtime, analysts and associates handle firms’ assessments and make changes as per the senior staff.
During off days, the junior bankers might take time for leisure and break and even browse further investment banking certification courses but they cannot use social media platforms as most investment banks create firewalls for such distracting websites.
Afternoon Hours
If the day is not much demanding, lunchtime can typically stretch to 45 minutes or an hour at a nearby eatery or building’s cafeteria. Breaks normally occur somewhere between 12 pm – 2 pm and are generally spent with colleagues with similar designation level.
There should be updated presentations and models from respective analysts by the time investment bankers get back to their desks. Now, they have to go through these documents and suggest corrections before handing them back to the analysts.
Work during afternoon hours highly focused on active deals. Investment banking teams are provided one deal at a time, which is the live deal, and senior staff is critical about crossing and dotting every appropriate letter. Merger and acquisition (M&A) and initial public offerings (IPO) deals consist of transacting millions or billions of currencies, thus, firms cannot think of committing small errors.
Evening Hours
The latter half of the working day is split into two categories: before and after dinner. Investment bankers mostly have their dinner at the workplace around 7-8 pm. Work before is more organized and anticipated; analysts expect that associates accomplish their tasks by early evening so that they can review them again.
On a usual day, the initial after-dinner job is to review the morning’s work. Senior bankers and analysts dedicate the past few hours checking material stuff and creating remarks, which, at times, involve significant revamps to the sales book.
Investment bankers collaborate with many different professionals including, sales staff or equity research. Nevertheless, the evening hours are majorly spent with desktop publishing (DTP) division.
The revision-comment-correction process can recur twice or thrice before the night ends. Investment bankers have to contemplate thoroughly and work at a rapid pace to make sure the documents are edited accurately and on time.
Most of the banks offer car services for their employees to take them to their homes in the early morning hours. While senior investment bankers can leave the office at 10 pm, their junior counterparts usually go home around 1 am-3 am.