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The Basics: Confirm all aspects of the phone interview

It sounds simple, but getting this wrong may jeopardise your chances of passing the interview. You need to make sure you have the following:

- Date, time and length of the interview. For international interviews, make sure of what time you are talking about (GMT, Continental Europe, EST, etc.), and make sure that you will actually be available.

Many investment bankers and students that plan to move into hedge funds or the investment management industry often ask us to recommend books and a study plan for the CFA.

When you register for the CFA, you already receive a lot of recommended readings and study notes to help you prepare, so those are materials that you need to read in priority. But below are also a couple of very useful additional books that we recommmend:

Kaplan CFA Basics: The Schweser Study Guide to Getting Started
Bruce Kuhlman

What is the CFA?

The CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) designation is a professional certification granted by the CFA Institute, which tests and focuses on portfolio management, financial analysis, and generalist aspects of some other areas of finance. To become accredited, the candidate needs to:

1. Pass three six hours exams (which are called "levels": level I, level II and finally level III). The pass rates are typically about 40%-50%.
2. Have a bachelor degree minimum (or equivalent education or work experience)

How do you become an investment banking Vice President?

In the large majority of cases, Vice Presidents are Associates that have been promoted to the next level (usually after 3 years to 3 years and a half at the associate level). The promotion to Vice-President is highly competitive, and it is quite common for associates to be fired in their third year if they do not display a strong enough potential.

Below is a list of the top hedge funds based in London. This list only includes the large hedge funds, with assets under management of at least over $1 billion. Note however that those hedge funds are a mix of macro funds, relative value, credit, equity long/short, multi strategies, fixed income, arbitrage, activist, bonds and so on.

Brevan Howard (www.brevanhoward.com) - One of the largest European Hedge Fund
Man Investments (www.mangroupplc.com)
BlackRock (www.blackrock.co.uk)
BlueCrest Capital Management (www.bluecrestcapital.com)
Lansdowne Partners (www.lansdownepartners.com)

In the link attached is a template CV for UK investment bankers provided by our partner KEA Consultants. It also includes examples of transaction description for mergers and acquisition and leverage finance.

Click on the London Investment Banker resume template

Below is a list of private equity funds that have offices in London and have a significant European presence. We broke down the list in "generalist" funds that cover all sectors across difference geographies, "sector specialists", "specific region-focused" funds and finally private equity funds within investment banks.

Note that the list below covers only the major funds and doesn't include venture capital funds and other private equity funds that have less than 500m of assets under management.

Generalist Funds with London-based operations

Below is some good advice from specialist recruiting firm KEA Consultants about the Private Equity Recruiting Process.

The private equity interview process is challenging from start to finish. Most firms will interview a candidate over three to four rounds, but there are cases where it can be as many as ten rounds. It all depends on the firm, the number of people they want you to meet and the testing involved.

Exit opportunities at the Analyst level

Exit opportunities at the analyst level are plenty! Investment banking analysts are a very hot commodity (especially at the top investments banks) and you will get calls from headhunters after a couple of weeks in your new job, and they won't stop calling. This is because analysts are young, well trained, ambitious, work very hard and can handle stress. The more deals you have closed and the more prestigious the bank you work for, the more frequent the calls will be.

How to you become an Investment Banking Associate?

Investment Banking Associates are typically fresh MBA graduates with a couple of years of professional experience (not necessarily in banking or finance), or analysts that have been promoted to the next level. In the US MBAs are the majority but in the rest of the world and London analyst promotes are the majority

Associates from MBA programmes go through a very similar process to analysts, but the interviews are much more focused on technical skills and leadership abilities, which are key skills for an associate