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Investment Banking: Overview

Investment Banks help companies and governments issue securities, help investors purchase securities, manage financial assets, trade securities and provide financial advice. The leading investment banks including Merrill Lynch, Salomon Smith Barney, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and Goldman Sachs are said to be in the bulge bracket.

Other investment banks are regionally oriented or situated in the middle market (e.g. Piper Jaffray). Others are small, specialized firms called boutiques which might be oriented toward bond-trading, M&A advisory, technical analysis or program trading. Firms have lots of different areas and groups within them. In most firms, there is sales and trading which works with owners of securities, investment banking which works with issuers of securities (firms and governments) and capital markets which goes in between the other two. To get an idea of how a firm is organized, check out the products and services groups at Goldman Sachs.

Best Resources

Harvard Business School Career Guide: Finance 1999
Lists job descriptions in various departments of major investment banks, commercial banks and Fortune 500 firms including contact persons, addresses and phone numbers. An invaluable resource.

Monkey Business: Swinging through the Wall Street Jungle.
By John Rolfe and Peter Troob.
Many a starry-eyed megalomaniac has followed the siren song of Wall Street. Money, prestige, and power await them as they waltz off into the promised land...or so they think. They soon discover that the seductive sirens are actually a band of bowlegged sea hags. The promised land, it turns out, is always one more twenty-hour workday and another lap dance away. Monkey Business is the hilarious confession of two young investment bankers, John Rolfe and Peter Troob. Highly recommended.

So, You Want to be an Investment Banker: The WetFeet Insider's Guide To Landing a Job on Wall Street
WetFeet.com, 1999. The Wet Feet career guides are outstanding. You will also find a series of firm profiles at their web site.

Bloomberg
A financial information station that is increasingly appearing in good business schools. Check out the jobs section to obtain listings of hundreds of current jobs in finance (mostly investment banking). A great and current resource.

Beat The Street: The WetFeet Insider's Guide to Acing Your I-Banking Interviews
An essential resource on doing well in notoriously tough investing banking interviews. Ignore this resource at your own peril.

Tim Crack's Guide to Quantitative Questions from Wall Street Job Interviewers.
If you are interviewing for a job in derivatives or other relatively quantiative area you should get this book. Amazing!

Firm Profiles from WetFeet.Com

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