Not sure if you are being offered to a bulge bracket or not. The seats available, can count, we work with the Bulge Brackets a lot. Many of us at one point or the other would have been flew in to Singapore for superday and / or being offered a position at one of the tier-1 or tier-2 banks.

It is pretty clear that the IBD / CF / ECM /DCM of the bulge brackets did not hire average of two Malaysian per bank per year. Many of our talents are from very decent background. The Singapore year one analyst batch are not that large.

Ultimately, it is a personal choice. Those who are out of the 40 seats can wait at the sideline or move down the list to tier-2 and tier-3 banks.

I have interviewed a BNM Scholar from LSE with 7 SUKMA Gold Medals in a year. We have had interns from ivy league unis / imperial college / LSE etc.

More importantly, which way would allow you to rise to directorship. VP in bulge brackets pay you 350k SGD all in. and if you could not demonstrate your potential of bringing US$4 mil revenue to the bank per year, you are likely to be a VP for quite a while.

MD is a role when you bring in US$10 mil a year. Every Bulge Brackets has few MDs and there are only so many mega deals every year in SEA. That explains why so many MDs in Stanchart come and go.

A MD-equivalent banker in KL may have made 300k SGD (base case) and answering US$3 mil budget. If you are capable of doing US$10 mil, you will be quite a super star and can make around 500k SGD.

The baseline here is many of us keep harping on the difference of 130k - 160k SGD vs 20k-25k SGD paid to IB staff in Malaysia. We . We forgot that the top 3 out of the cohort of 50 to 80 fresh grads get paid 40k SGD - 55k SGD in their first year and up to 70k SGD as early as the second year.

Many of us forgot about the exponential increments that we are getting in Malaysia and only few know that our best year-three associates are mostly paid about 80k SGD to 125k SGD. Now you compare it with the year three associates that make up to 250k SGD in Bulge Brackets, the difference has narrowed down.

If you have friends that are year-seven / eight investment bankers and making around 40k SGD -50k SGD, a good question is to ask how many 120-hour work weeks they had over the last 5 years. Have they been bringing deals to the table to feed their juniors? Whether they think they are of bulge brackets materials? When is the last time they attended an IBD / CF interview at tier-1 / tier-2 banks in Singapore?

I often hear people saying that we are working very hard: 9am - 8pm with 2-hour lunch in between and even have to work on Saturday. Including lunch hours, that is only 66 hours and I can be pretty sure that my friends at Bulge Brackets are not as relax as this.

Notwithstanding of the above, I do agree that $$$ is not everything and a lot of our peers don't wish to put in so much hours for that extra $ that comes in the form of performance-based bonus.

Now that the parameters are clear, I welcome feedback and criticism on my view of Malaysia IB landscape.

That said, CF opening is available, ECM opening may be created for top-of-the-curve, outright impressive candidates.

You can PM me your CV wen you are ready and can understand the IB industry.