Investment banking, or corporate finance, is a high- octane, gruelling environment. Working on corporate deals demands nerves of steel and a combination of passion and commitment verging on the pathological. The rewards are enticing, though. The 11 investment banks in The Times Top 100 Employers are offering average graduate starting salaries of £32,000 to £40,000 plus bonuses this year.

The most prominent work is what is known as front-office tasks, where you raise finance for business, take new companies to the stock market and take quoted companies back into the private sector.

To get in you’ll need at least a 2:1 from a good university, ideally in maths, finance or science. “It’s essential that you can demonstrate excellent preparation and a total commitment to succeed in a highly competitive environment,” Sarah Butcher, editor of eFinancialCareers, says. “Start planning early at university and get involved with finance clubs.” Also apply for internships in your penultimate year.

Employment opportunities are the best they’ve been since the dot-com boom, as banks catch up with the skill shortage that followed a period of under-recruitment in 2000-02. At Cass Business School almost 20 per cent of MSc graduates went into investment banking last year.

“Entrants will be the top tier from the best universities and will probably apply direct,” says Simon Lindrea, a director of Michael Page, a recruitment consultancy. “The real gap in the market is people with two to four years’ experience - a legacy of the retrenchments in 2002-03.”

The biggest employers are the global investment banks, including Barclays Capital, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Citigroup, Dresdner Kleinwort, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Merrill Lynch and UBS. Traditionally a very male-dominated milieu, many organisations now appear to practise what they preach about equal opportunities.

A female investment banker says: “There’s still a lunch-is-for-wimps attitude in some firms but the stereotypical hunter-killer image is less evident these days, partly because the banks realise that this image can scare off new clients.”

“It’s fantastic if you can handle the pressure, the deadlines and the hours,” a graduate with a leading bank says. “Once you have a track record you can do other jobs, such as management consultancy, because we know exactly what makes a business tick.”

For some though, the pressure is unacceptable. One Cambridge graduate says: “Four years ago I accepted a job with a top investment bank. The salary, golden hello and bonuses gave me an income of £50,000 in my first year - twice what I’d expected as a chemical engineer. But the hours were frightening and we were considered wimps if we took even half of our holiday entitlement. By the fourth year those of us who were left were surviving on coffee, adrenalin and, in some cases, cocaine. I felt like I’d sold my soul to Mammon. I got it back and got out.”



Debbie Harrison is a senior visiting Fellow at Cass Business School. Read previous articles in the series at: www.cass.city. ac.uk/thetimes.

• A sixth of final-year students applied for investment banking jobs in 2006, the third most popular choice
  
  
• Two thirds of applicants are men, more than half went to private school and 70 per cent say that money is a motivator
  
  
• More than 90 per cent believe that the work is stressful
  
  Source: High Fliers Research
• Next week: What it's like working in asset management

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