Friday, April 20, 2012

The beginning of the end

The thesis is very much done now, in fact, most of my classmates have been out and about celebrating the last few weeks before we all go back to reality. There is a certain bittersweet happiness as it's all come to an end, but yet, we would all like to be able to have the fun that we had - but going forward, we all need to start work and making money. While the program was not the best, we still had fun with classmates who became good friends (not all classmates become good friends, be prepared that you will dislike perhaps even half of your classmates).

When it comes to getting jobs, I guess the trick is to sign as soon as possible, or rather, as soon as you're satisfied with the package. A friend of mine who tried to negotiate his package found his offer recinded when the company decided that they would delay the project and didn't want him anymore. It was quite an unprofessional move on their part and now my friend is stuck looking for jobs again.

As for myself, I have a verbal offer, and am waiting to finalize it as well as hear back from another company which I've had more than the usual number of interview rounds with. I guess over the next few weeks, things should be finalized, unfortunately for me, none of those companies are in Beijing, or even China. So it looks like I will be leaving China for the future plans which really makes me a bit sad because I enjoyed Beijing immensely. Beijing grows on you and you either love it or hate it....

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Jaime said

"Hi, I am a PhD studetn at Tsinghua, already wrote you some times. I just realize you already worked for an investment bank. Could you tell us, how is it? I mean, the job load, payment, why did you quit...

Last thing I wanted to ask you if you could recommend me a SEM professor, experienced with mergers and acquisitions. I want to do my dissertation in that topic, and it turns out that my professor doesn't know too much about it"


Hi Jamie

An investment bank is huge, covering M&A, DCM, ECM, Private Banking, Sales and Trading etc.. I'm not really sure which aspects you would like to know about. Personally, I don't really want to talk about what I did at the investment bank, I feel it might reveal a bit too much. But, I recommend that you read the following link and the book "Monkey Business". However, I will try to share some light about payment and why I left.

How much you earn at an investment bank depends on what you do and how much you suck up to your boss. Where I did investment banking (not Goldman Sachs), people got paid a decent salary and received between 4 to 12 months of bonuses, depending on the economy etc. Monkey Business addresses this topic in the book, but I feel that the book is more relevant to New York and maybe London/Hong Kong.

Why did I left investment banking? I left investment banking because I was bored of doing the same thing over and over again, tired of telling clients that we would make a lot of money for them when in reality, the markets were unpredictable (in general) and because I felt that there was very little upside to staying in an investment bank - I don't really like finance that much. So having all those things on my mind, I decided that it would be best to leave.

Now, what I can say though is that if you do work in a bank (commercial/investment), you will be able to learn finance pretty well, and you will be able to transfer those skills sets over to business. So all in all, working in finance for those couple of years turned out pretty good. Although by the end of it, I was waking up everyday and asking myself why did I work in finance even though I couldn't stand it. And so I left.

Most people are interested in investment banking because of how much money they can make, or how they're able to leverage that and go into private equity/hedge funds/venture capital. That does make sense, but money elsewhere can be equally be as good or better if you find the right opportunity. Personally, I don't know how many people move from investment banks into PE/HF/VC, but I think in general, only a small percentage are able to make the move. People would be better off doing what they're passionate about, I think it would be much easier to make money that way.

As for Tsinghua SEM professors that specialize in M&A, to be honest, I don't know of any of the professors that actually had hands on experience with M&A. The best thing would be to ask the MBA office for the list of professors that have had experience advising on M&A, it would be much better that way instead of just speaking to the current Corporate Finance professor (who I think doesn't have experience).

A day in the life of an investment banking associate

John Rolfe and Peter Troob - Monkey Business


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Re-con - Without Doubt


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