I will only work for JPMorgan, Citi, or Bank of America. This is why

Times have changed in investment banking. I’ve been in this industry since before the 2008 financial crisis, and the range of safe seats has dwindled more and more. 

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When I graduated and looked for my first job, there was a range of tier one banks to apply to. They included Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley, but there was also Citi, Barclays, UBS, Credit Suisse, BNP Paribas, Bank of America and Deutsche Bank. And then there were tier two European banks and a range of smaller tier three players like Numis and Liberum.

The options then were wide, and so were the jobs on offer. If you didn’t want to work in M&A, you could try equity or debt capital markets, broking and leveraged finance. And that was even before the wide range of jobs on offer in sales and trading. 

Times have changed. I work in debt capital markets and I will only work for Citi, JPMorgan and – maybe – Bank of America.

At other tier one banks, like Morgan Stanley, I think jobs are just too insecure. One minute you’re there, the next you’re not. They’re full of people earning over £300k in the mid-ranks and it’s difficult to justify their continued employment. 

Tier two banks are full of people who are intellectually subpar. They have fancy titles but are fundamentally engaged in things like mid-market lending repackaged as financial innovation. They’re experts at LinkedIn self-promotion but lack sharpness and dynamism. And when you interview for those roles, you realise they’re paid terribly.

I have tried to build my career down the middle path. I don’t earn as much as at a major bank. I don’t originate deals. But I am an expert in my niche, and I am indispensable to my deal team. Most days I work 14-16 hours, and I am OK with this. 

There are sacrifices to this approach. I do miss the pay in origination, but I don’t miss the feeling that I was being paid far too much for checking credit books and running a process that any smart analyst could do just as easily. 

For the moment, I have no plans to move. There’s a limited subset of jobs that I’d be willing to take. In the long term, I aspire to either make managing director via my niche role, or maybe to move to a buy-side credit firm. 

If you want to build a long term career in banking now, you need to be focused. If not, you risk coming to a premature end. There are far too many people piggybacking on the latest trends and claiming credit for work they have not done. This is not what I want to be.

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