A Day in the Life of a Managing Director Corporate Investment Banking at Wells Fargo
A Managing Director in corporate and investment banking at Wells Fargo's day is highly variable, spending significant time preparing for and following up on client conversations ("way more time that goes into preparing...than the actual...when you're on stage"). This involves deep financial and strategic analysis, constantly juggling reactive client needs with proactive business development in a competitive landscape where securing "the gold medal" is the ultimate goal.
Communication, Executive/Leadership, Problem-Solving, Financial Analysis, Strategic Thinking
Advizer Information
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Job Title
Company
Undergrad
Grad Programs
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Eric Frandson
Managing Director, Corporate & Investment Banking
Wells Fargo
UC Berkeley
UC Berkeley, MBA
Anthropology, Sociology
Finance (Banking, Fintech, Investing)
Sales and Client Management
Scholarship Recipient, Took Out Loans, Worked 20+ Hours in School, Transfer Student
Video Highlights
1. A day in the life is not typical and involves a lot of preparation and follow-up for client conversations.
2. The role requires analysis of financial, mathematical, and macro-level trends to understand a company's strategy.
3. Competition among banks for business is fierce, like the Olympics, with a hierarchy of gold, silver, and bronze medals representing the level of success achieved in securing deals, requiring proactive strategies and the ability to react to client needs and announcements.
Transcript
What does a day in the life of a managing director of corporate and investment banking look like?
There is no typical day, but at a high level, the work involves constantly preparing for or following up on conversations. In my role, I am responsible for having customer conversations.
These conversations typically last between 30 and 60 minutes, so you have to make them count. There is a lot of preparation involved, with more time spent preparing for and following up on these conversations than the actual discussion. It's essentially like practicing before the game and then looking at the film afterwards to debrief.
We analyze what we learned, what can be done better, and what opportunities exist. A lot of preparation goes into having human-to-human conversations. This includes a lot of analysis, some of which is financial and mathematical, and some is more macro-level.
You're looking at macro trends within the industry, and there's an overlay to understanding the company's strategy. That strategy must always be at the center of your focus. Then the question becomes how to bring it all together.
Some days, you have a plan and time to think, but sometimes customers have their own questions or have publicly announced initiatives. Sometimes you've been involved in their decision-making process, and other times you're reacting to it. In those cases, you're competing to earn lead business.
In this work, there's a lot of business available, but there's a hierarchy. Think of the Olympics: there's a gold, silver, and bronze medalist, and then qualifiers who made the team but aren't on the podium. The aspiration for all these banks is to achieve the gold medal as many times as possible.
The day in the life looks different depending on which customer calls you. You have 25 customers; some are active on a given day, and some are quiet. So sometimes you're doing one thing, and sometimes you're doing another.