My Life as an Investment Banker...Part 1

I really waited for this Lenten break to allow me uninterrupted time to recall events, collect my thoughts and re-examine my feelings about my investment banking years. Actually, it is tempting to just do a Q & A on this subject, to directly address issues (which may be the real intent in previous searches) like: qualifications to get hired as an investment banker, what the recruitment process is like, what the exact nature of the work is, what a typical day in the life of an investment banker is like, and so forth and so on.

For sure, there are a good number of authoritative sources for such information, which a routine Google search can generate. So what value, if any, can I still add to the many accounts and write-ups already available on the Web? Offhand, an honest personal experience, not a generic insider view which represents a composite experience of investment banking professionals . Also, an investment banker story not made in Wall Street and therefore has a different cultural milieu, which blog readers in emerging markets could relate to. Lastly, a story of an accidental investment banker that could serve to reassure people who doubt if they can hack it in this business.

An Exit is Always an Entrance to Somewhere

The wonder with movies is that you can close your eyes, pay no attention to the dialogue, and still be able to guess—often correctly—what will happen next by simply tuning in to changes in the soundtrack. In the real world, unfortunately, there is no such thing. Despite your best analysis, you cannot accurately predict what will happen next if you do this or do that, or if your fortune is about to change for the better or for the worse. Like in my case in 1995...

I was then vice president for corporate planning and happy where I was when my life took a blow and an unexpected turn early that year. My father passed away after Valentine’s Day, surprising us with the seriousness of his ailment. Coincidentally, on the day he died, my corporate planning career also began to gasp for precious breath, threatening to throw me out of my comfort zone.

I was summoned "upstairs," the meeting was brief and the message, clear. One of the VPs in the bank’s investment banking group will be leaving soon for a new assignment in the London branch so there will be a vacancy. Also, the bank planned to create a new project finance group to support the country’s thrust to build more infrastructures. Somebody had been chosen to replace the former; would I consider the latter?

Up until that point, all I had done was staff work (research, branch operations, corplan) so I expressed my reservations about investment banking, project finance in particular. Not to worry, the boss said, as a crash program in project development/management will take care of that fear. And so in May 1995* after that crash program, I bade goodbye to my comfort zone, moved to the adrenaline-rush world of investment banking, and never looked back. Every exit, after all, is an entrance to somewhere else.

To be continued....

----
*Sorry for mistakenly dating this to July 1995 in my unedited version of this post.

(The clipart shown above courtesy of Barrysclipart.com)

Print

Related Posts, By Label (auto-generated):

Widget by Hoctro | Jack Book | The-Online-Quest