Books to read
A classic that takes a tongue-in-cheek approach to describing the absurdities of recruiting for IB and life as a junior. No spoilers here but I still think about the time I had to interview in an MD's hotel room for my summer internship and couldn't stop thinking about the relevant scene in this book
This is one of several great stories about the excesses of leveraged buyouts in the 80s (see Den of Thieves and The Predators Ball) but this is one best covers the corporate clients, the progenitors of private equity and of course, the bankers, both M&A and financiers. A must-read to understand the origins of current banking culture.
This is a great history of a legendary investment banking firm, Lazard Freres, focused on mergers & acquisitions and their most famous bankers including Felix Rohatyn and Bruce Wasserstein. My favorite part is seeing the ebb and flow of corporate trends such as favoring conglomerates/consolidation and then pure-play businesses/divestitures
Perhaps one of the more surprising choices on this list given the number of great investment banking and finance books. I like how Jonathan explains what managing directors do day-to-day and the lengths they take to win business
A lesser known book about one of the greatest bankers of all time. Frank Quattrone had a legendary career at Morgan Stanley in Menlo Park before taking his show on the road to Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse First Boston. This story chronicles his rise and fall in the dot-com boom due to the hubris of of aggressively selling IPO securities to investors. It is worth checking out his current firm Qatalyst's website to see how he continues to build his legend after he was acquitted of securities crimes
Movies to watch
This underrated movie covers a day in the 2008 financial crisis, loosely based on Goldman Sachs' process to unwind its mortgage-backed securities positions. It is not about traditional IB per se, but the ensemble cast (Kevin Spacey, Demi Moore, Jeremy Irons amongst others) and examination of the most important moment in finance in the last 40 years makes it a personal favorite
Of course, a movie one has to watch to work in the IB industry. Numerous times I have had colleagues and bosses use phrases such as 'money never sleeps' in real life. The plot is a simplistic take on the 80s LBO craze, but one can always take a deeper dive through one of the great books about that era
Another movie on the financial crisis with a great ensemble cast, but given the shadow that 2008 casts on IB, it is a great one to understand how our financial system almost collapsed. There are several other good ones such as the Big Short but this one dramatizes the moves made by the key players, Hank Paulson, Tim Geithner and the bank CEOs, as the financial system hung in the balance
This story on a pump-and-dump 'bucket shop' tells a similar story to the more modern Wolf of Wall Street but with a bit less glorification. There are some classic scenes such as Ben Affleck's Boiler Room speech that any self-respecting banker will know
Just like Wall Street, it is really a movie about the culture of IB than the reality. And while I haven't met anyone in banking quite like Patrick Bateman, the clothing, the dialogue and need to 'fit in' mimic many of the facets of a life in IB and remind one to remain wary
