09/2011 - 07/2012 - Cass Business School, MSc in Banking and International Finance
09/2008 - 07/2011 - Leicester Business School, First Class Honours, BA in Financial Management
09/2006 - 07/2008 - Architecture B, Business Studies B, Geography B
06/2011 - 09/2011 - Allianz Global Investors, 16 week internship. Assisting on current projects, client contact, market research, data research, creating company profiles, info memorandums, client and pitch presentations
01/2010 - 06/2011- Corporate Finance boutique, 18 month part time M&A analyst, creating and checking pitch books, doing market and company research, creating long and short lists, data research, creating data rooms
08/2010 - 09/2010 - Insurance firm, 4 week internship, assisting on current projects, matching claims and payouts, preparing reports.
07/2010 - 08/2010 - Private bank, 4 week internship within the Asset Management division, creating company profiles, info memorandums, client and pitch presentations, data research
2012 Participant Next Generation Forum Future & Finance, Frankfurt, Germany
2012 Participant Campus for Finance Private Equity Conference, Vallendar, Germany
2011 - 2012 Active Member in Cass Business School's Finance, M&A, Consulting and Entrepreneurs Societies
2010 - present Long/short multi asset fund
1-year return: 450%, 6-month return: 240%
2012 Bloomberg Certification in Equity, Fixed Income, FX and Commodity Essentials
2011 Sir Stelios Scholar
2011 7City Training in Financial Modelling
MS Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) very good
Bloomberg very good
FAME intermediate
Factset basic knowledge
English - mother tongue
French - basic knowledge
Score=75%
An experienced M&A banker who’s participated in the graduate recruitment process, says:
Overall this quite a strong CV – the presentation / formatting could be a little better (larger font size, more standard font) – which may seem picky, but these things matter in M&A, where he will spend a lot of time doing exactly that!
Decent academics (although not really outstanding) and lots of work experience not just of the M&A side of investment banking but also capital markets – relevant and shows work ethic. He has shaped non-M&A work to fit the M&A role (“company profiles” are mentioned several times and these are the analysts bread-and-butter) however I’d want to know what kind of profiles they were and how detailed / relevant they were to Corporate Finance.
I’m pretty sure this CV will get him a few interviews, although stronger grades would have made him no-brainer to meet with.
This demonstrates conviction although I’d have liked to read his cover note – perhaps he didn’t know that including one would be helpful. In it, and later at interview, I’d like to see him draw together the threads of his varied work experience into a convincing story about why he wants to work in M&A, and not accounting, Private Equity, Asset Management or Markets. I’d also ask him how he managed to achieve such him returns on his equities portfolio as they seem almost too good to be true!
