Imagine a company like Tesco wants to buy a smaller competitor. They need someone to tell them: is this a good idea? What's a fair price? How do we structure the deal? How do we raise the money to pay for it? That's the investment bank. They charge a fee (typically 0.5–2% of the deal size) for this advice. On a £1bn deal, that's up to £20m in fees — for one transaction.
Banks are split into groups by industry (called "coverage") and by product type (like M&A or capital markets). As an analyst you'll likely sit in one of these groups.
Mergers = two companies combining into one. Acquisitions = one company buying another outright. Both happen constantly — companies do this to grow faster, eliminate a competitor, buy technology they don't have, or enter a new market. The bank's job is to advise on whether it makes sense, what to pay, and how to structure and execute the deal.
Famous examples: when Disney bought Pixar for $7.4bn, or when Microsoft bought LinkedIn for $26bn — an investment bank was advising on each side of those deals.
- 7:00amArrive. Check emails. Your MD (Managing Director — the senior person who owns client relationships) sent overnight comments on a pitch deck. Fix them before 9am.
- 9:30amBuild or update a financial model — this means a spreadsheet that projects a company's future revenues, profits and cash flows to figure out what it's worth. You'll use models called DCF (Discounted Cash Flow) and Comparable Company Analysis. These are covered in future lessons.
- 12:00pmResearch a target company — read their annual reports, press releases, industry reports. You're building the "information memorandum," a detailed document the buyer will read.
- 3:00pmJoin a call with the client (maybe a CFO of a FTSE 100 company). Take notes, update the team.
- 6:00pmUpdate the pitch book (presentation deck). "Pitch books" are slide decks used to win new client mandates or present deal ideas. Lots of formatting.
- 10:00pmStill in the office. A deal is live, so you stay until the work is done. This is the reality of IB — especially in your first two years.
Coverage teams are organised by industry. You'd sit in one and become the "go-to" banking team for companies in that space:
- Front-row seat to deals that reshape industries
- Unmatched technical training — you leave knowing how to value anything
- Prestige that opens every door (PE, hedge funds, corporate, MBA)
- Compensation — £65–80k base + £30–60k bonus as a first-year analyst in London
- Network of incredibly smart, driven people around you
- 80–100 hour weeks are normal, not rare
- Work-life balance is essentially nonexistent in year 1–2
- You're junior — a lot of your work is execution, not decision-making
- High pressure, unforgiving environment
- You can go weeks without seeing friends
IB is often a 2-year programme before people move on. The exit opportunities are the best in finance:
In a bank, some teams specialise by product (like M&A or capital markets) and some specialise by industry (called "coverage"). A Healthcare coverage banker knows the pharmaceutical industry inside out — the key companies, the regulatory environment, the typical deal structures. They're the ones who go out and get clients, then bring in the product specialists to execute the deal.
Think of coverage bankers as the relationship managers, and product bankers (like M&A) as the technical executors. As an analyst, you'll work across both.
- 8:00amRead all the news in your sector — earnings releases, regulatory updates, competitor moves. You need to know your sector better than the clients do.
- 10:00amPrepare for a client meeting — building slides on market trends, deal ideas you could pitch, comparable transactions.
- 2:00pmAttend a client meeting (sometimes virtually, sometimes at the client's office). Listen, take notes, follow up.
- 5:00pmWork on a pitch book — a presentation deck showing a potential client why they should do a deal and why your bank should advise on it.
Equity means ownership. When a company sells shares, it's selling a slice of itself to investors. Those investors become part-owners (shareholders). ECM handles this — IPOs (Initial Public Offerings, when a company first lists on a stock exchange), rights issues (selling new shares to existing shareholders), and secondary offerings.
Debt means borrowing. When a company issues bonds, it's borrowing money from investors and promising to pay it back with interest. DCM handles this — corporate bonds, government bonds, leveraged loans. Global bond markets are actually bigger than equity markets — trillions of dollars of debt are issued every year.
An IPO (Initial Public Offering) is when a private company lists its shares on a stock exchange for the first time, allowing the public to buy them. Think of when Deliveroo listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2021, or when Airbnb listed on NASDAQ in 2020. The ECM team at the bank manages the entire process — valuing the company, finding investors, setting the price, and executing the listing.
Your job as an ECM analyst is to manage that process: build the investor presentation (called a "prospectus"), run the roadshow (where company management pitch to investors around the world), and price the deal correctly.
- 7:30amCheck overnight market moves — ECM is very market-sensitive. If markets dropped 3%, a planned IPO might be delayed.
- 9:00amUpdate the "book" — during a live deal, you track every investor order. Who wants how many shares at what price.
- 11:00amWork on the prospectus or investor presentation — heavy writing and financial analysis.
- 3:00pmCoordinate with lawyers, accountants, the company's management team. ECM is highly process-driven — lots of moving parts.
- High-profile transactions (major IPOs make the news)
- Market-facing — you understand investor psychology
- Better work-life balance than pure M&A
- Strong compensation
- Deal pipeline depends on market conditions — quiet markets = quiet ECM
- Less deep financial modelling than M&A
- Execution can become repetitive
A bond is essentially an IOU. A company needs £500m. Instead of going to one bank for a loan, they issue 500,000 bonds worth £1,000 each to thousands of different investors. Those investors receive interest payments (called the "coupon") every year, and get their £1,000 back when the bond matures (reaches its end date). The DCM team structures this — deciding the interest rate, the maturity date, the legal terms.
This is a massive market — every government, bank, and large corporation constantly issues debt. The UK government issues bonds called "gilts." The US government issues "Treasuries." DCM analysts work on all of these.
Imagine a pension fund — it has £50bn of pensioners' money that it needs to grow over 30 years. It doesn't have the in-house team to manage every investment itself, so it hands the money to an asset manager (like BlackRock) and says: "grow this, within these risk limits." BlackRock charges a management fee (typically 0.1–1% of assets per year) and builds a portfolio of stocks, bonds, property, and other assets.
Inside the asset management firm, different teams manage different types of assets. As an analyst, you typically join one of these teams and become a specialist.
Fundamental analysis means making investment decisions based on the actual underlying business — its revenues, profits, management quality, competitive position, growth prospects. You're trying to work out what a company is truly worth, then comparing that to its current share price. If you think it's worth more than the market thinks → you recommend buying. If less → you recommend selling.
This is different from technical analysis (using charts and price patterns) or quantitative investing (using algorithms). Fundamental analysts read annual reports, meet company management, build detailed financial models, and form conviction-based views.
- 7:00amRead overnight news, earnings releases from companies you cover. Markets open at 8am in London — you need to know what's happening.
- 9:00amBuild or update a financial model for a company. You might be updating revenue forecasts after a company reported quarterly earnings.
- 11:00amCall with company management (IR team). Ask about strategy, margins, competitive threats. Build your understanding.
- 2:00pmWrite an investment note — a structured document arguing why a stock is a buy or sell. This gets presented to the portfolio manager who makes the final call.
- 5:00pmUsually done. AM has significantly better hours than IB — you're typically out by 6–7pm most days.
- Genuinely interesting work — you become a real expert in companies and industries
- Much better work-life balance than banking
- Intellectual depth — this is a thinking job
- Direct market impact — your research influences real investment decisions
- Long-term career path with growing responsibility
- Lower starting pay than IB (£45–60k vs £65–80k)
- Performance pressure — if the fund underperforms, everyone feels it
- Can be slow to move up
- Harder to get into directly from university
Instead of analysing individual companies, quants look for statistical patterns in large datasets to identify where markets are mispriced or predictable. They build algorithms that can process millions of data points — stock prices, trading volumes, macroeconomic data, even satellite imagery of car parks — and automatically generate buy/sell signals.
This is where finance and computer science converge. Some quant strategies trade hundreds of times per second ("high-frequency trading"). Others hold positions for months based on systematic factor models. The pay is among the highest in all of finance.
A traditional fund manager buys stocks they think will go up and waits. A hedge fund can also short stocks — this means borrowing shares and selling them, then buying them back cheaper when the price falls. If a stock drops, the short position profits. This is why hedge funds can make money even when markets fall.
They also use leverage — borrowing money to invest more than they actually have. If you have £1bn but borrow another £1bn, you can invest £2bn. Returns are amplified. So are losses. This is why hedge funds are seen as high risk.
Most hedge funds are strategy-specific. Here are the main types:
- 7:00amMarkets open at 8am. You're already reading overnight news, checking your positions (the trades you currently have on), and looking at what moved in Asia overnight.
- 9:00amA company you're long on (you own shares in) just reported disappointing earnings. Do you sell, hold, or buy more? You have minutes to decide.
- 11:00amResearch a new investment idea. Model it out. Present the thesis to the portfolio manager. If they agree, you put on the trade.
- 4:30pmMarkets close. Review the day's P&L (profit and loss). What worked, what didn't, why.
- 7:00pmRead, research, build models. Hedge fund analysts are relentless about staying informed.
- Compensation ceiling is the highest in all of finance — top PMs earn £10m+
- Pure meritocracy — performance is everything
- Small, elite teams — no corporate nonsense
- Intellectually intense in the best way
- Extreme pressure — one bad year and you can lose your job
- Very difficult to break into directly from university
- Funds close — entire teams can be let go overnight
- The stress is constant and real
A PE firm raises a fund of £2bn from pension funds and sovereign wealth funds (these investors are called "LPs" — Limited Partners). The firm (the "GP" — General Partner) then uses this money to buy companies, usually taking on additional debt to increase the purchase size (this is called a Leveraged Buyout, or LBO).
Example: Target company is worth £500m. The PE firm puts in £200m of equity and borrows £300m in debt to buy it. Over 5 years, they improve the company — cut costs, grow revenues, improve management — and sell it for £900m. After repaying the £300m debt, they've made £600m on a £200m investment. That's a 3x return in 5 years. This is the model.
The LBO (Leveraged Buyout) is the core transaction type in PE. You'll hear this term constantly in interviews. "Leveraged" means using borrowed money (debt) to amplify returns. "Buyout" means buying the whole company.
In IB, you advise on deals and move on. In PE, you own the company after the deal. You're not just running the model for a fee — you have real skin in the game. That changes everything about how you think.
You'll also sit on the board of portfolio companies (the companies the fund owns), attend monthly management meetings, and help with strategic decisions like pricing, hiring, or launching new products. It's more strategic and operational than banking.
- 8:30amReview a new investment opportunity ("deal flow"). A business is for sale — your job is to figure out if it's worth pursuing. Initial screen: what sector, what size, what's the story?
- 10:00amBuild an LBO model — this projects the company's cash flows, models the debt structure, and calculates what return you'd make at different entry and exit prices.
- 1:00pmDue diligence call with the target company's management team. Ask hard questions about the business — what drives revenue, where are the risks, what does the competitive landscape look like.
- 3:00pmPortfolio company check-in — one of the companies the fund owns. Review their monthly financials, flag anything that's off-track.
- 7:00pmFinish the deal memo — a detailed document that makes the case for or against investing. If you're recommending a £300m deal, this needs to be airtight.
- Highest compensation in finance at senior levels (carry = share of fund profits)
- You see your decisions play out over years — real ownership
- Strategic + analytical — more intellectually rounded than IB
- Smaller teams, more responsibility per person
- Almost impossible to enter without 2+ years in IB first
- Still brutal hours — especially during live deals
- Extremely competitive recruitment process
- High pressure — losing money on a deal affects real people (pensioners, etc.)
PE buys mature, profitable companies and makes them more efficient. VC backs early-stage companies that might not be profitable yet — or even have significant revenue. PE is about financial engineering. VC is about pattern recognition and judgment: can this team, with this idea, in this market, become huge?
The financial math is also different. In PE, you might aim for a 3x return. In VC, most investments return zero, but the winners might return 50x or 100x. A single investment in the right company at the right time can return an entire fund.
- 9:00amReview inbound pitch decks — startups sending you their investor presentations. Most are filtered quickly. You're looking for something unusual.
- 11:00amFirst call with a founder. You have 30 minutes to understand the market, the product, the team, and the traction. What's the "why now" for this company?
- 2:00pmMarket mapping — research a sector you think is interesting. Who are the key players? Where is value being created? Which companies could be interesting investments?
- 4:00pmSupport a portfolio company — help them hire, make introductions, review their go-to-market strategy. VC is very much an advisory role post-investment.
- Work directly with founders building the next big thing
- More creative and less structured than banking
- Better lifestyle than IB or PE
- Equity upside if you back the right company
- Base pay is lower than IB or PE
- Most investments lose money — you live with that
- Very network-driven entry — hard to break in cold
- Carry (your share of profits) takes 10+ years to materialise
People say "I want to be a trader" without realising there are entirely different worlds depending on what you trade. Each desk (team) specialises in one asset class:
Equities = shares in companies. When a company like Shell is listed on the London Stock Exchange, its shares are traded there every day. An equities trader at a bank might be doing several things: executing large buy/sell orders for institutional clients (hedge funds, pension funds), making a market in a stock (standing ready to buy or sell at any time), or running the bank's own positions.
Equities desks are broken down by geography (European equities, US equities, EM equities) and sometimes by product (cash equities vs equity derivatives — options and futures on stocks).
- 6:30amArrive before markets open. Review overnight news, pre-market moves, any earnings releases. You need to know exactly what's happening before the bell rings.
- 8:00amMarkets open. Volume and volatility spike. A hedge fund client wants to buy £50m of Barclays shares without moving the price. You work out how to execute it.
- 12:00pmQuieter. Talk to salespeople, read research, monitor your positions. Eat lunch at your desk.
- 3:30pmEnd of day rush. US markets are now open and affecting European prices. Final position management before close.
- 4:35pmMarkets close. Review P&L, flatten any overnight risk you don't want. Usually home by 6pm.
Foreign Exchange (FX) is the trading of currencies — converting one currency into another. The FX market processes over $7 trillion of transactions every single day, making it the largest financial market on earth. It runs 24 hours a day across time zones (Tokyo, London, New York).
Banks make money on FX by being "market makers" — they buy at one price and sell at a slightly higher price, keeping the difference (the "spread") as profit. Corporate clients (like a UK company that receives US dollar revenues) also use FX desks to convert currencies. And investors use FX to hedge against currency risk in their international portfolios.
FX traders need to understand macroeconomics deeply — interest rate decisions by central banks (Bank of England, Federal Reserve, ECB) move currency markets significantly.
Rates refers to interest rates — and all the financial instruments whose value is driven by them. The most important are government bonds (UK gilts, US Treasuries, German Bunds). When a central bank changes interest rates, bond prices move, and rates traders profit or lose based on their positioning.
Rates traders also deal in interest rate swaps — contracts where two parties exchange fixed interest payments for floating ones (or vice versa). These are used by companies to manage their borrowing costs. It's a complex, technical product, and rates desks tend to be among the most quantitative in a bank.
Key drivers of rates markets: central bank decisions (Fed, ECB, BoE), inflation data, government borrowing levels, economic growth figures.
The "sales" in Sales & Trading is not selling products to the public — it's selling financial services to institutions. Your clients are sophisticated investors: hedge funds that want to execute large trades, asset managers who need market intelligence, pension funds managing billions. You're the link between them and the bank's trading desks.
A good salesperson knows what their clients need before they do. If you cover a macro hedge fund, you know they're watching the Fed meeting next week — you call them with your rates trader's view on what might happen, and offer to put on a trade that expresses that view. You generate revenue by driving flow (volume of transactions) through the bank.
- Market hours — you're done when markets close (4:35pm in London)
- High energy, real-time environment
- Performance directly tied to compensation
- Every day is different — markets always provide surprises
- Very early starts (6–6:30am)
- Constant stress during market hours
- Automation eating into traditional trading roles
- Bad days mean real losses — hard to leave that at the door
A research analyst might cover 10–15 companies in a specific sector (say, European pharmaceuticals). For each company, they maintain a detailed financial model, publish regular research notes on events (earnings, strategy updates, regulatory news), and have a price target — their estimate of what the share should be worth in 12 months. Fund managers use this research to inform their investment decisions.
Banks publish research to generate relationships with institutional clients, who then direct their trading business to the bank. This is called "soft dollar" commission. Since MiFID II regulations (2018), clients have to pay explicitly for research — which has reduced headcounts in research divisions across the industry.
Research analysts specialise deeply in one sector. Common sectors at major banks:
A research note is a published document (typically 5–50 pages) that an analyst writes for institutional clients. It contains: a summary view (Buy/Hold/Sell), a price target (e.g. "we think this stock is worth £15 in 12 months, currently trading at £11"), a detailed financial model, and the key reasons for the view. The best research analysts are widely read and influential — their notes move stock prices.
- 6:30amA company in your coverage (one of the stocks you cover) just reported earnings. You need to update your model and publish a note before markets open at 8am. This is the hardest part of the job — 90 minutes to form and articulate a view.
- 8:30amCall with fund managers who read your note and want to discuss it. You defend your view, take questions, update them on your thinking.
- 11:00amIndustry conference — you attend to build knowledge and network with management teams. Relationships with IR (investor relations) teams are valuable.
- 2:00pmUpdate your financial model. Refine your forecasts. Begin writing a thematic research piece on a trend affecting your sector.
- 6:00pmUsually done. Research has better hours than banking — but earnings season (quarterly reporting) is brutal.
- You become a genuine expert — people call you as the authority on your sector
- Published work — you build a reputation and a public profile
- Better hours and lifestyle than IB
- Intellectually stimulating — constant learning
- Pay ceiling lower than IB, PE, or HF
- MiFID II has structurally reduced budgets and headcount
- Your reputation is tied to your calls — being wrong publicly is uncomfortable
- Earnings seasons are extremely intense
