Investment banking is a field of banking, which deals in acquiring funds, making investment, and performing various other tasks for their clients. Read on to find out lucrative career options in this field.
The lucrative world of investment banking is marked by hefty pay packages and long working hours. Careers in this field are good for qualified individuals, who can deal with high profile clients and perform exceptionally well in the core area.
Despite being competitive and time intensive, this job offers an exciting lifestyle for the employees, who can bag huge incentives at the end of the day. The job profile in this field involves extensive traveling and grueling hours but provides the glimpse of a larger-than-life place, where big deals and fortunes are made overnight.
It also provides an opportunity to learn the ins and outs of corporate finance and pick up analytical skills, which remain useful for the rest of an individual’s career.
The investment banks provide governments and giant corporations with investment services. These services may include buying, selling, and trading securities or managing assets. They also provide an advisory panel in the form of consultants for big clients, in order to give financial advice and investment ideas.
These panels are very helpful for the clients as they suggest how to manage securities for raising finance, take-overs, and mergers and acquisitions. These banks also deal in security trading, bonds, equities, and derivatives, and offer brokerage and distribution facilities.
They are very different from commercial banks, which deal with the collection of deposits from clients and provide direct loans to organizations and individuals. They also keep track of the market trends, in order to give profitable advice on making public offerings.
Job Profiles
Fund Managers
These professionals look after money held by insurance companies, pension funds, and unit trusts. They research markets and apply the knowledge of analysts, in order to invest the client’s money for long-term growth. Fund managers also meet high profile clients and investors to make and discuss investment strategies.
Investment Bankers
They belong to two departments, namely corporate finance and operations. The role of those dealing with corporate finance is to advise companies, institutions, and governments, and help them to achieve their financial goals. They act on behalf of clients and raise money on the capital markets.
They meet CEOs, CFOs, board members and other high profile candidates of a company and carry out business deals. Those dealing with operations support front-office staff and deal with queries from clients. They help the management of daily processes of clearing and settling transactions made in the front office and supervise the teams of clerks in office.
Analysts
They keep track of vital market information for clients and provide them when investment decisions are made. Their major job is to research different aspects of share prices and companies’ abilities to pay back their debts.
Stockbrokers and Traders
Stockbrokers advise clients on investment strategies and risk management. Their main job is to purchase and sell securities on behalf of the clients and obtain a best possible deal for them. For this purpose, they interview clients and assess their requirements in terms of investments they want to make.
Traders deal in financial products or commodities and read the market to get maximum benefits for their clients. They keep in touch with their own research and sales teams, in order to come up with a good and flexible stock-trading strategy.
The high-energy, hardworking, and dynamic professionals in this field are the ones who draw big salaries for their work. Needless to say, their success totally depends on the ability to provide efficient and round-the-clock financial services for clients, and to demonstrate flexibility and innovativeness in their work.