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They Hired Over You. Now What?
Explore why banks hire MDs over you and how it affects career growth for senior VPs and Directors in the finance industry.
Why Lateral Recruiting in Your Promotion Year Almost Never Works
Explore the challenges of lateral recruiting in your promotion year in investment banking and understand the risks involved.
2023 Investment Banking Compensation Report
The published 2023 Investment Banking Compensation Report by Prospect Rock Partners provides a comprehensive analysis of compensation trends across investment banking. Based on responses from almost 1,000 investment banking professionals (representing 98% of total respondents), the report offers valuable insights into how compensation has evolved since 2022.
The Great Poach: How Wall Street’s Elite Banks Are Raiding Each Other for Proven Talent
Elite investment banks are aggressively poaching proven mid-level bankers with public M&A experience from direct competitors in a preemptive Q4 hiring cycle, while systematically excluding uptiering candidates from lower-tier platforms despite an active market.
Wall Street Reverses Course: Johnson Report Projects Broadly Positive Bonuses for 2025
Johnson Associates’ November report projects broadly positive year-end bonuses across financial services—with investment banking functions seeing increases up to 25%—reversing May’s forecast of widespread 10-15% declines as strong equity markets, resurgent M&A activity, and robust trading volumes overcame earlier tariff-related concerns.
Why F-1 STEM OPT Students Can Finally Breathe Again: What the October Clarification Really Means
The October 20, 2025 USCIS clarification confirmed that F-1 students already in the US (including those on OPT/STEM OPT) are exempt from Trump’s $100,000 H-1B fee when filing for change of status—meaning banks can still sponsor them for the traditional ~$5,000 cost instead of the prohibitive amount required for offshore hires. While this doesn’t make international students more attractive than domestic candidates, it restored the pre-September baseline of “difficult but workable” after September’s announcement made the path seem nearly impossible, though banks remain cautious and are currently focused more on protecting existing international employees than aggressively hiring new ones.
The $400B AI Spending Spree Hits a Wall: Why Your IB Job Might be Safer Than You Think
Why 95% of AI pilots are failing—and what it means for investment banking jobs. For investment banking—where a misplaced decimal can cascade through an entire financial model—this is a dealbreaker.
Your ability to verify, catch mistakes, and ensure accuracy? That might be more valuable than you think.
OpenAI Just Hired 100 Ex-Bankers to Replace You: Here’s the Timeline
OpenAI has assembled 100+ ex-bankers from top firms to train AI that replaces the entire analyst workflow—not augments it—and the 12-18 month timeline for bank deployment means current and prospective analysts need to reconsider their assumptions about compensation, skill development, and exit opportunities right now, not in 3-5 years.
Beyond Goldman’s 1,000 Layoffs: How AI Could Reshape Investment Banking Compensation and Careers
Goldman’s AI-driven layoffs despite record profits expose investment banking’s most uncomfortable question: if AI now handles 95% of analytical work, why pay junior bankers $200K—and what happens to talent quality, skill development, and competitive dynamics when compensation potentially drops 30-40% while the work shifts from learning traditional banking to supervising AI output?