background
Welcome to Wall Street Prep! Use code at checkout for 15% off.
Wharton & Wall Street PrepWSP Certificates Now Enrolling for February 2025:
Private EquityReal Estate InvestingApplied Value InvestingFP&A
Wharton & Wall Street Prep Certificates:
Enrollment for February 2025 is Open
Wall Street Prep

Day in the Life of an Investment Banking Analyst

Step-by-Step Guide to Understanding A Day in the Life of an Investment Banking Analyst

  Table of Contents

Time to get to that merger model

Day in the Life of an Investment Banking Analyst: 1st Year M&A Group

In a prior post, we posted an actual pitchbook so you can see exactly what they look like.

Here, a new investment banking analyst in the mergers and acquisitions (M&A) group describes a typical day in his own words.

Sample Day in the Life of an Investment Banking Analyst

  • 9:30am – Arrive at work and check email and voicemail
  • 10am – Continue working on a buy-side client presentation (“pitchbook”) from yesterday.  Since you already finished with the “Public Market Overview” pages last night, you now begin inserting a graphical representation of possible exchange ratios.
  • 11:25am – An associate calls to tell you that you have been staffed on another deal and you’ll need to put together a PIB (public information book) about the target.
  • 12pm – You finish putting together the PIB and get back to work on the original pitch.
  • 1pm – You grab lunch with your friends at the cafeteria.
  • 1:45pm – Back at your desk, you open up a merger model you need to finish for another deal team by the end of the night.  Since you pretty much finished the model last night, you’re now checking your work for bugs, mistakes, formatting, and analyzing various accretion/dilution results based on different scenarios (sensitivity analysis).
  • 3:45pm – Your associate from the buy-side pitch calls and tells you that the VP wants to meet in a conference room to look at what you’ve got so far and discuss how to move forward.
  • 4pm – You meet with the VP and your associate.  The MD is traveling on another pitch so he’s conferenced in.  Basically, since 40% of the target company is owned by an investment company, their consent is vital for the success of the acquisition.  As such, you need to put in a few pages on this investment company into the pitch so the client (the potential acquirer) understands what he’s up against.
  • 5pm – Back at your desk, you incorporate some of the changes into the pitchbook.  You include a profile on the investment company and a page on stock ownership.
  • 7pm – You order dinner with your friends from a giant book full of menus that everyone uses on the floor. You eat in an empty conference room.
  • 8pm – Around 8:00pm, things start to settle down and you can begin to catch up on all the work you were distracted from during the day.
  • 10pm – Off to the gym for a quick workout.
  • 11pm – Back in the office, you pull up your merger model that was interrupted by your afternoon meeting. You put the finishing touches on it and email your associate to let him know it’s ready.
  • 2am – You call a car and head home

Build a 3-Statement Financial Model | Free Course

By submitting this form, you consent to receive email from Wall Street Prep and agree to our terms of use and privacy policy.

Submitting...

Step-by-Step Online Course

Everything You Need To Master Financial Modeling

Enroll in The Premium Package: Learn Financial Statement Modeling, DCF, M&A, LBO and Comps. The same training program used at top investment banks.

Enroll Today

Comments
Subscribe
Notify of
12 Comments
most voted
newest oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Paaro Devdas
November 5, 2019 7:04 am

what is the difference between scenario analysis and sensitivity analysis? In plain language

Aakash
March 16, 2017 11:08 pm

Is this a typical day in Indian IB firm?
Or USA or London ?

Rizaan Samuels
November 1, 2016 9:15 am

Hi all Sincere thank you for all your help and comments. Please can I get some help with a website that has advanced LBO and merger models I could look at and work through? All these packages are priced in USD and being from SA that is way too expense… Read more »

Aayush Kaushal
November 24, 2015 2:32 am

This is a nice article, but can you do other jobs like investment banker and financial analyst?

Steven
September 27, 2015 7:45 am

Hi, can you do a ‘first year junior’ version for this article?

Learn Financial Modeling Online

Everything you need to master financial and valuation modeling: 3-Statement Modeling, DCF, Comps, M&A and LBO.

Learn More

The Wall Street Prep Quicklesson Series

7 Free Financial Modeling Lessons

Get instant access to video lessons taught by experienced investment bankers. Learn financial statement modeling, DCF, M&A, LBO, Comps and Excel shortcuts.