Investment Banking

Investment banking graduates (usually joining as "analysts") help companies, governments and investors raise money and buy or sell businesses. The work is mostly building financial models in Excel, researching companies and industries, and producing presentation documents that senior bankers use to advise clients on deals such as takeovers, stock market flotations or bond issues. Clients are typically large corporations, private equity firms or institutional investors rather than individuals.

Starting salary: £50k–£65k
Live graduate jobs: 36 open now
Main way in: The dominant route is a structured summer internship (usually…
They usually ask for: Degree subject genuinely does not have to be finance or…

Approximate graduate salary

Starting pay is high by graduate standards - very broadly in the region of £50,000–£65,000 base for a first-year analyst at a large London bank, plus a discretionary bonus. This is an approximation only and varies considerably: smaller or regional firms and some non-advisory functions pay noticeably less, and bonuses swing with market conditions.

What you'd actually do

Building and updating financial models in Excel - projecting a company's future revenues, costs and cash flows to estimate what it is worth or what a deal would do to its finances
Making 'pitchbooks' and client presentations in PowerPoint: slide decks setting out a deal idea, a valuation, or a list of possible buyers for a business
Gathering and checking data from company annual reports, regulatory filings, broker research and paid databases, then summarising it into comparable company tables
Turning comments from a vice president or director on a draft deck around quickly, often several rounds in a day and often late in the evening

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Sitting on internal calls and, as you gain experience, client or lawyer calls, taking notes and picking up the follow-up actions
Managing the admin of a live deal - keeping the virtual data room organised, tracking which bidders have signed confidentiality agreements, coordinating with lawyers and accountants
On markets-facing desks (sales and trading), the rhythm is different: early starts before markets open, monitoring prices and news, producing morning commentary and running trade bookings and risk reports

How graduates get in

The dominant route is a structured summer internship (usually after your penultimate year, typically eight to ten weeks) that converts into a graduate analyst offer. Most graduate seats at the larger banks are filled this way, so applying for the internship is effectively applying for the job.
Spring weeks - short insight programmes in first year (or second year of a four-year course) - are a very common stepping stone, because they often give priority access to summer internship interviews.
Direct graduate scheme applications are still possible but there are fewer places left over after internship conversion, so competition is intense. Applications open very early, often in the summer or autumn before the September you would start.
Off-cycle internships (three to six months, outside the summer calendar) are common at smaller banks and in some European offices, and are a realistic route for finalists and recent graduates who missed the main cycle.

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Coming in from an adjacent job - Big Four transaction services or audit, corporate finance at an accountancy firm, or a boutique advisory firm - usually after one to three years, sometimes with an ACA qualification. Fairly common as a sideways entry.
A master's in finance is used by some career-changers and non-finance graduates to get into the recruiting cycle, though it is not required and does not substitute for internship experience.

What employers ask for

Degree subject genuinely does not have to be finance or economics - history, languages, engineering, maths and natural sciences graduates all get in. That said, economics, finance, maths and engineering are heavily represented, partly because those students apply in larger numbers.
Most large banks look for a 2:1 or above, and strong A-levels (or equivalent) are often asked for on the application form. Some screen on them, some do not - this varies by employer.
Demonstrable commercial interest: being able to talk about a recent deal, why it happened and what it meant for the companies involved. This is tested in interview far more than technical knowledge.
Technical finance knowledge - valuation methods, how the three financial statements link together - is expected by interview stage for corporate finance roles. Self-study is normal and perfectly acceptable if your degree did not cover it.

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Internship or insight experience is close to a practical requirement at the biggest banks. At smaller advisory boutiques it matters less.
No professional exams are needed to get in. Once hired, markets-facing roles require FCA-regulated qualifications and registration; banks arrange and pay for these.

Skills that matter

Excel and financial modelling

The core output of a junior analyst is a model, and building one that is accurate, quick to update and readable by someone else is the thing you will be judged on daily.

Accounting literacy

You need to read a set of accounts and understand how a change in one line flows through the income statement, balance sheet and cash flow statement, because that is what a model does.

Attention to detail under time pressure

A wrong figure or a mislabelled chart in a document going to a client is a real problem, and juniors are the last line of checking before it goes out.

Stamina and the ability to work unpredictable hours

Deals have deadlines that do not move, so evenings and some weekends get taken over in bursts - handling that without the work quality dropping is a genuine skill.

Clear written summary

Turning a hundred pages of research into three slides a managing director can present is most of the value a junior adds.

Managing upwards

You will take instructions from several seniors at once with competing deadlines, and knowing when to flag a clash rather than silently miss something is what separates a reliable analyst from a struggling one.

Putting these on a CV? We counted which skills 12,914 live graduate adverts ask for, and what to do with the answer — part of our application advice.

Where it leads

Analyst: typically around three years, sometimes two or four. The work is model-building, document production and deal admin. Progression at this stage is fairly structured and time-based at larger banks.
Associate: usually reached by promotion from analyst or by hiring in after an MBA. You start checking others' work, running workstreams and having more direct client contact. Commonly another three or so years, though this is less rigid.
Vice president: you run deal execution day to day, manage the junior team and start being expected to bring in or maintain client relationships.
Director then managing director: the job becomes mainly origination - winning mandates from clients. Timelines here vary enormously and many people never make, or never want, this step.
Leaving is extremely common and is not a failure. Typical exits after two or three years include private equity, hedge funds, corporate development inside a large company, venture capital, startups or an entirely different sector. Many banks assume a proportion of each analyst intake will move on.

What people get wrong

“Investment banking is one job.”

It is a cluster of quite different jobs under one roof. Corporate finance and M&A advisory (deals, long hours, lots of PowerPoint), sales and trading (markets hours, early starts, pricing and risk), equity research (writing analysis on listed companies), and capital markets (helping companies issue shares or bonds) have different rhythms, different skills and sometimes separate application processes. 'Investment banking' in a job advert most often means the advisory side.

“You spend your time making bold calls on where markets are going.”

On the advisory side you do not trade or take positions at all. The first couple of years are production work - formatting, checking, modelling, assembling documents - and the judgement calls are made several levels above you.

“You need an economics or finance degree.”

Banks recruit broadly across subjects and teach the technical content on the job and in induction training. What they will not teach you is commercial curiosity, so a history graduate who follows deals closely is a stronger candidate than a finance graduate who does not.

“The starting salary is the whole story.”

Pay is high relative to most graduate roles, but it comes with hours that can be genuinely punishing during live deals, and a meaningful share of total pay is a discretionary bonus that depends on how the bank and your team performed. Base and bonus also differ a lot between large banks and small boutiques.

Where this varies

Practice differs a lot by employer type and location. Large global banks (mostly in London, with some operations in Birmingham, Glasgow, Belfast and Bournemouth) run formal graduate schemes with rotations, classroom training and set promotion timelines. Independent advisory boutiques hire in much smaller numbers, often with no formal scheme - you join a team and learn on live deals, which can mean more responsibility earlier but less structure and support. Mid-market corporate finance teams, including those inside accountancy firms and in regional cities such as Manchester, Leeds and Edinburgh, work on smaller deals, usually with more predictable hours and lower pay. Hours vary too: the reputation for very long days is most accurate on M&A advisory teams at large banks during live transactions, less so in markets roles where the day is bounded by when exchanges are open.

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General guidance about the role across the UK market, not about any specific employer. Entry routes and requirements vary — always check the individual job advert.