Understanding Middle Office Investment Banking Roles

What is the typical work in Middle Office Investment Banking?

• Firms that offer middle office roles in India include JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, UBS and Deutsche Bank. Note that some firms also offer middle office roles for Equity Research, although that is less common than IB.
• Upon joining, an analyst is typically tagged to a geography (London, SG, HK, Australia, Dubai, etc.) and a product team (FIG, Industrials, TMT, Consumer Retail, Leverage Finance, Financial Sponsors Group etc.) within that geography.
• You will then be supporting the Analyst and Associate pool who are working in that team in the “front office” (i.e. in the market where the deals are taking place). Workload, pressure, hours and quality of work would vary from team to team depending on the deal flow and bench strength in the front office.
• Work could vary from putting together slides to making changes in the financial model to helping arrange data for running due diligence to doing market research and making company profiles.

Does everyone make it to the front office?

• Mobility to front office is challenging and more uncommon than what it used to be 8-10 years ago. Exits from the middle office to the front office are few and far.
• However, going to the front office on secondment opportunities or during a live deal is fairly common. It helps in knowing your team members better and provides face time during high engagement period of a deal.
• Further, mobility requests to the front office are generally considered after 2-3 years of supporting the team satisfactorily from the middle office.
• Analysts who do get the opportunity to make the transition from India to the front office re-join the front office as first-year analysts and take 2-3 years before they are considered for promotion to an Associate role there.

What are the exit opportunities from middle office?

• The silver lining about working for global bulge bracket firms is learning and development (both from trainings as well as on the job coaching).
• The skills acquired while working in the middle office are valued by most domestic and mid-market firms operating in India – it allows these firms to take on talent which has already worked in the industry and can hit the ground running with little support or oversight.
• A lot of people from the middle office, therefore, get exit opportunities to mid-market IB firms in India (think Big4 IB or top mid-market Indian firms like Avendus, JM Financial, Kotak IB or global Elite Boutiques like Rothschild and Moelis among others).
• However, most firms will ask you to start as an Analyst since you lack the experience of working directly in the local market.