Macam insider trading/ frontrunner je

Seriously focus on the skillsets rather than number of years experience.

What if you have say 10 years of experience but your skillsets are not up to par and you turn out to be less capable than someone 5 year of experience?

It's ok if money is important to you but make sure you have the skillsets /competency to back it up.

Thank u for giving a critical perspective on this!
I guess its true to a certain extent, but m&a and corporate finance role in an investment bank are really hard to get.
And about exit opportunities, i know a friends sister worked as a buy side analyst at nomura malaysia and then become an investment banker in maybank? I guess what im saying is its possible to shift career because research does financial modellings too.. or are u specifically mentioning the limitaions of sell side?

For me, idk why but management trainee programs gives very limited view as u get rotated to each department which in my opinion is wasting time especially if i know what i want..

I didnt know that investor relation does auditing, but i guess its more about checking, think i might be ok with it. Im quite a perfectionist and detail oriented. Also i think writing, research and communicating is one of my strengths so i always think i should leverage my expertise... plus the perks of the IR job sounds like it overrides the cons...
Plus there is also exit routes to private equity too i heard (altho tough)

Yea i compare myself to people highly because i use it as a benchmark. Or else i will be too comforabke with my life and i dont want that. It's bad in a way, but I can't help it... Do u have any advice? Also, truthfully im not after big money, just good enough to live life comfortably not luxuriously.. PS: I'm quite low maintenance... I also think abt what i want in a career, most other financial career seemed boring to death to me. Like audit/corporate banking/dcm. I like equities specifically because i generally like companies and businesses, industries and the environment interaction. So.. voila..

This post has been edited by hazelnaz2041: Oct 6 2017, 08:40 PM

Ha ha, not really critical, just playing the devil advocate.

Firstly about exit opportunities, nothing is certain and there is no clear formula for career progression. Plenty of people has change career even when they don’t fit exactly. However, I am just highlighting that it won’t be easy if you want to shift to a different career path later on. If you can convince the interviewer, why not? There is always the 1 in a million story. The most difficult part of career shift is perception (ie: what others think of you). For example, imagine you are the CF director and you want to recruit a VP. You have 2 candidates, 1 is experienced in CF and another equally good choice but only experienced in research. From this info only, who will you choose? Priority is always given to the most relevant in hand.

You are mostly right about the management trainee program. Getting absorbed to your department of choice is very difficult especially if you have competition.
Investor relation does not really do auditing but they have to prepare stuffs that matters to the investors such as annual report. Some company merge their IR function with their internal CF or finance. It depends on the size of the company. It’s quite hard to find a pure dedicated IR function unless it’s a really large company.

Your strength now might not be your “perpetual strength”. Especially if you have not been subject to heavy scrutiny, performance evaluation or critical feedback. Btw, most of the fresh executive jobs can quite “non-sexy” especially in the beginning (Ie: data crunching, Photostat, copy & paste,…). Depends on your boss style.

The problem with using friends as benchmark is that this won’t be sustainable in long term. Ever wonder why people just stop caring once they hit mid-management? They don’t have a clear goal for beyond or they lack the drive to move themselves forward. Those with drive and passion will ignore comparison with peers and focus on their own goals (Ie: entrepreneurs). For corporate, some can jump and do exactly what they want on day 1. Some take a longer route while some take a different route. I think research is harder to get in as they don’t need a lot of people whereas corporate finance is always taking in people due to high turnover (same to audit). I am not promoting audit or CF but wish to highlight that these can be the option if you first choice does not materialise. The trend nowadays, people don’t stay long within a single company anyway. Budget 3 to 5 years is a reasonable plan. Staying long within a company is also a problem especially if you don’t get promoted or learn anything new. Interviewer can also ask that.

Hi guys. Thank you so much for sharing. I learnt a lot of info thanks to you guys. Mind if I bump this thread as I have few questions to ask.

Firstly, I am local grad (not UM/USM/UKM). I’ve always wanted to be in the M&A/ECM/DCM/PE team. However due to where I graduated despite the many internship experiences (accumulated 1 yr plus) that I have (Finance, Venture Cap and Startups) plus the stiff competition from overseas grad, I scored no chance at all to break into these space. However recently, I happened to score a chance to break into Equity Research in one of the local banks.

Being a fresh graduate in 2019;

1) I’m trying to manage my expectations. Truth to be told I find myself to worth 4-4.5k of salary due to my internship experiences and my co-curricular (but I’m a second upper, not first class). Hence, how much of a starting salary should I expect in ER as a fresh graduate? I have friends who just started his freshie role in a local PE firms that pays insanely high, and some friends in Management Trainee program that pays in between 4-5k, but since I don’t have friends in ER, its pretty hard for me to manage my expectation. Recently I heard the banks association of malaysia announced there will be an increase of 10-15% of salary to all bank staffs, I wonder how does this affect fresh grads starting salary in ER?

2) I planned to spend 2-3 years in ER, get my CFA and try to break into ECM/DCM/M&A in the same company because due to where I graduated, I think I won’t be able to break it as a fresh graduate. Perhaps it would be easier if I’m already in the same industry/sector. Hence what are my chances to break into these 3 dept as I realized most of the senior analyst (2-3yrs exp) are those with accounting background from accounting firms.

Truly appreciate your sharing. Thank you.

This post has been edited by PoPoBear: Jun 10 2019, 08:33 AM

A thing about starting salary as fresh grad, don't expect and negotiate too much as you don't have much leverage in the first place. If you ask for too high, they will expect more from you and you might suffer in longer term if you cannot deliver. Some PE or management consulting firm pay very high starting salary but can terminate you within 1 week notice if you can't deliver in 3 months. Turnover is very high as the money comes from partners/ investors not the company.

For banks, there are the 2 type of staffs of whether you are under union or not. Investment staffs, manager level and above and certain staffs are not union so those 10% rise not applicable to them. Better check with HR.

For banks don't worry, starting is average but they will reward you if you deliver through promotion and increment. That's why you see high performer tend to stay.

Those 3 dept you mentioned require origination skills such as drafting proposal, financial modeling, project management, strategy, familiarity with regulations and others. ER exposure and CFA does help

I see, thanks a lot for the info! In your opinion, given that I get an offer from sell-side, and subsequently another offer from buy-side. I know for sure that I wanted to be in the sell side as the learning curve is steeper. Hence is it advisable for me to get the sell side to counter offer the buy side’s offer with a better benefits/compensation package? Or does the two doesnt jive (sell side =\ buy side) hence would be really stupid to disclose to sell side employer about buy side offer?

This post has been edited by PoPoBear: Jun 11 2019, 07:27 AM

I can’t comment much on salary negotiation as there are too many variance about.

I am just curious why you think sell-side learning curve is steeper?

Been thinking on this a lot and I think you’re right. My thinking could be biased because most of the peers I’ve approached are from sell-side. All of them says that its best to start at sell side first, learn, and then move to buy side.

Do you mind giving some insights on this? My aim for first 3-4 years:

- Solid foundation on technical skills
- Networking with people in the industry
- Broad view and perspective in micro and macro sectors, MY and regional.
- Being able to move later to Fund Management, M&A, ECM, DCM, PE where I plan to spend another 5-7 years and slowly build my management level roles.

I plan to hustle as much as I can; getting CFA, grind, and many others.

Truly appreciate your input.

I think learning curve depends on the size of your portfolio assigned. Hence, you may have different experience wherever you go (big / small company included). In terms of sell vs buy, most will join sell first then they go buy. There are some transferable skills but the nature of work is a bit different. It’s something like external audit vs internal audit.

You can always set a plan for your career which is good but keep it flexible in case you find better opportunities or it does not fit your preference.

In terms of studying CFA, I always value work experience over professional qualifications (I think most portfolio managers do too). If you think you have good career progression (plenty of job opportunities, meaningful projects, primed for promotion), I will always choose job over study. If you can cope with both, you can always try but don’t over stress yourself.

I would like to concur that employers do value work experience over professional qualifications. Managed to more than doubled my salary in less than 3 years from when I first started out as Research Assistant (now Equity Analyst for 2 years). Grateful that I have passed the 6 figure annual salary mark.

This is even after taking a few tries to pass my CMSRL exams in the 1st year and have just failed my CFA level 1 for the 3rd time. I mainly blame it to the fact that I prioritize my work over my studies for CFA. What really helped me was getting top ranking with clients, having unique insights on my coverage as well as ability to get critical information to help with stocks call.

Not to say that you don’t need CFA. It teaches you the fundamentals in analysing financial statements and how to perform valuations. Learning the syllabus will definitely increase your confidence in your work. So I salute all those whom are able to pass their CFA exams while working. They are a higher level of disciplined breed.

From hereon, I’m just trying to sharpen my skills and gain more knowledge wherever I can as well as continue to build better relationships with market players and hope this would bring me to that RM20-30k level in the future

Equity research analysts are quite lowly paid aren't they? After all, anybody with 80 IQ can do the job. Not to mention the posher skills that Ah Beng don't possess like financial modelling are actually not that useful to get a company's fair value. There is no future for people who research equities.

I don't the pay is low but not as lucrative previously.

There are many factors and it's quite a lengthy discussion. In summary:
1) Law changes: Previously most banks offer research info as part of banking package. Now must separately charge, so most reduce or stop providing already. Their bonus pay is definitely affected.
2) There are many more products than just equity. Bond is more complicated nowadays. Myriads of ETFs (leveraged) and derivatives. You also have alternatives like bitcoin, P2P, nfts, ...etc.
3) Fundamental analysis is part of the many factors that affect pricing. Events like covid and war can easily detail those valuations. Just look at how many analyst have to adjust valuations for glove stocks like top glove and supermax.
4) Competition. With YouTube and telegrams, you have plenty of amateurs, unlicensed and trend pickers that can appeal to certain demographics.

The skills obtained are always useful for other field though.

What is the banking package for? I thought research info is just to generate interest in retailers to push up their stocks?


This post has been edited by Celebrity2022: Mar 22 2022, 05:15 PM

Long version:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/equity-resea...-julien-onillon

In fact, since 1 January 2018, in order to allow greater transparency and to combat the risk of conflicts of interest, the regulator has required fund managers to budget their brokerage fees and research costs separately.

What does this mean?

I thought the article already summarised it quite well. In essence, user must pay for it now. Since the value is subjective, most see little appeal in buying it as it will affect their KPI, Numbers,... Etc.

Previously, it's given for "free" hence client can mask it.

Imagine you start paying for all the pundits tips.

I can say there's no 10% increment for IB folks. Plus for union, the increment usually takes into account any delays in signing of new CA, so it might seem big but some have had no increment for past couple of years while the negotiation is ongoing.

I think research is also a "sunset" part of IB, similar to how equities has been viewed the past couple of years.

The money's in treasury and global markets. Another field that is up and coming would be ESG investing. I think we will soon see crazy levels of pay as we try to grab talents for this.