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If you’re considering applying for placement or internship roles within Investment Banking – STOP! Make sure you’ve read The Gateway Guide to Investment Banking first….!

Recommended reading: the 20 books that everyone interviewing for an internship or graduate job in investment banking should have read…

General

1. “Vault Guide to Investment Banking” – Tom Lott – the easiest-to-read and most informative guide we have seen about investment banking; essential reading
2. “Vault Guide to Finance Interviews” – D. Bhatawedekhar – introduction to some of the technical knowledge required across all aspects of banking and finance
3. “All You Need to Know About the City: Who Does What and Why in London’s Financial Markets” – Christopher Stoakes – An interesting and comprehensive introduction to the world of banking.  Easy to read.
4. “Accounts Demystified” – Anthony Rice – the best introduction we have seen to accounting for non-accountants
5. “The Age of Turbulence” – Alan Greenspan – the best insight into global macro economic forces over the last 30 years, despite the recent bursting of the Greenspan bubble.

Corporate Finance / M&A

1. “Acquisition Essentials: A Step-by-Step Guide to Smarter Deals” – Denzil Rankine & Peter Howson – a good introduction to the different stages of a deal
2. “Corporate Valuation” – David Frykman – the best introduction to the key subject of valuation; easier to read than either of the classics Copeland or Brearley and Myers
3. “Valuation: Measuring and Managing the Value of Companies” – Tom Copeland – classic textbook, quite technical
4. “Principles of Corporate Finance” – Richard Brearley and Stuart Myers – classic textbook, rather heavy and very technical
5. “Monkey Business” – two years in the life of an investment banking analyst…easy to read and quite humorous
6. “Big Deal” – Bruce Wasserstein – dauntingly large book, but actually very readable and easy to understand; starts with account of major recent M&A deals, then reviews the classic M&A / corporate finance services and techniques
7. “Barbarians at the Gate” – Bryan Burrough and John Helyar – classic business biography of the take-over of RJR Nabsisco in 1988; a thrilling account of a real deal; reads like a novel.

Financial Markets

1. “Vault Guide to Sales and Trading” – Gabriel Kim – the best starting point for this area; we cannot recommend the Vault Guides highly enough
2. “Vault Guide to Investment Management” – Andrew Schlossberg – again, great introduction; pulls off that rare trick of balancing being easy-to-read with having sufficient detail
3. “How the Bond Market Works” – Robert Zipf  – easy to understand textbook
4. “Mastering Credit Derivatives: A step-by-step guide to credit derivatives and their application” – Andrew Kasapi
5. “Market Wizards – Interviews with Top Traders” – Jack Schwager – strange book – quite involved and is a compilation of interviews with traders about their trading strategies – for wannabe traders
6. “Liars Poker” – Michael Lewis – classic real-life account of Michael Lewis’ career as a bond trader at Salomon in London, where he reported to John Merriweather (see When Genius Failed)
7. “Den Of Thieves” – James Stewart – similar in style to ‘Barbarians’, but gives an account of the insider trading in the 1980s that brought down Michael Milken and Drexel Burnham Lambert; again reads like a thriller
8. “When Genius Failed – The Rise and Fall of Long Term Capital Management” – Roger Lowenstein – true-life account of the rise and fall of the largest hedge fund in the world run by John Merriweather – the star character in Michael Lewis’ Liars Poker.

Recommended Employers – the 15 firms that everyone interviewing for an internship or graduate Job in investment banking should aspire to work for

(Click on the Company Name to see if they have any reviews on RateMyPlacement.co.uk)

1. Goldman Sachs – by far the best investment bank in the world, bar none, year in year out and just about survived the credit crunch albeit with a loss of its pure-form investment banking status.  There is Goldman, then there is everyone else
2. Morgan Stanley – second only to Goldman.  Usually credited as having a more humane internal culture and renown for employing very high quality staff
3. Rothschild – British in style and with Lazard largely focussed on corporate advisory work rather than all-round investment banking business
4. Lazard – see Rothschild.  Largely turned round after its troubles surrounding its flotation
5. JP Morgan – sheer size means always a force to be reckoned with and benefits from the old Cazenove business in the UK
6. Greenhill – with Jefferies, next, emerging as the top two super boutiques, although little difference these days in lifestyle between them and the bulge brackets
7. Jeffferies – see Greenhill
8. Citi – big US powerhouse just about remaining as a monolithic business despite calls for a break-up; similar in structure to JP Morgan and Deutsche
9. Deutsche – main European player, striving to establish a major investment banking presence independent of its Debt Capital Markets business
10. Credit Suisse – survived the credit crunch better than most, and surprisingly has exhibited better risk management than its normally more cautious brethren UBS

And one other to note…

1. Blackstone – tiny M&A department compared to the others here, but you are surrounded by the finest financiers in the world in the private equity business down the hall.

Next time, in the final part, we take a look at doing the job itself, and the work of an analyst.