Financial Services

This past fall, Vault surveyed more than 3,000 investment banking professionals. We asked them to rate and comment on their firms’ benefits, compensation, culture, hours, and training, among other workplace factors.

In a recent Exchanges at Goldman Sachs podcast, Goldman president and co-COO David Solomon offers some rather helpful advice for college students. Solomon, who in addition to his Goldman duties spins music in Miami and the Bahamas under the stage name D.J.

Bethel Hailemichael is an associate in the Healthcare & Life Sciences Group at Harris Williams, a global investment bank specializing in M&A advisory services. Since March, Bethel has been working remotely from his home in the Church Hill neighborhood of Richmond, Virginia, the firm’s headquarters.

Rose-Gaëlle (“R-G”) Belinga is a Technology Associate in the Global Expiry System group at Morgan Stanley. R-G recently spoke with Vault about how she landed an internship and full-time position with Morgan Stanley, the best aspects of working for the firm, and the advice she has for students looking to pursue a career with a top financial services firm.

Last week, we released our latest Vault Banking 50, a ranking of the best investment banks to work for. Our rankings are based on a survey of 2,800 banking professionals, who were asked to rate firms other than their own in terms of prestige and to rate their own firm in various workplace categories, including culture, hours, training, compensation, and more.

Sales and trading careers are among the most dynamic, exciting, challenging, and rewarding. And there’s perhaps no better place to pursue a sales and trading career than New York-based global financial services giant Morgan Stanley—which offers a wide range of S&T roles, for all types of backgrounds and skillsets.

On Tuesday, April 14th, we’ll be releasing the new Accounting 50, our annual ranking of the best accounting firms to work for. This year, the rankings are based on a survey of more than 10,000 accounting professionals.

Business is evolving through technical innovation, and PwC, one of the leading professional services firms, is at the forefront of digital upskilling. PwC’s clients range from large global multinationals to small- and medium-sized organizations, which seek out the firm to help improve their business processes, transform their organizations, and implement technologies needed to run their business.

This week, along with releasing our new Accounting 50 Rankings, Vault published new profiles of the top accounting firms. In addition to employee feedback from our annual accounting survey, these profiles include information from firms on how they’re responding to the coronavirus pandemic with new initiatives such as remote-work policies, virtual interview policies, and internship and full-time hiring policies.

In honor of Pride Month, we’re highlighting some of our top-ranked employers for LGBTQ+ equity: Armanino, Bain & Company, McKinsey & Company, and Schellman. These employers are those that professionals rated the highest when it comes to recruiting, mentoring, supporting, and advancing LGBTQ+ individuals.

PwC, the No. 1 ranked firm in the new Vault Accounting 50, has been an active corporate responder in the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

Vault recently spoke with Sam Bobley, the founder and CEO of Ocrolus, a fintech firm whose technology quickly analyzes financial documents of any format or image quality with near-perfect accuracy. Vault recently spoke with Bobley about his firm, trends in fintech, the types of jobs available in the industry, and what job seekers can do to position themselves to get those jobs.

In the past few years, the most significant changes in the tech industry have occurred in fintech. Initially, fintech aimed to improve and automate banking services.

Finance firms, like many other firms, are increasingly using automation tools and programs to increase the speed and accuracy of their work processes. The reason why automation is so attractive is it helps employees to complete repetitive procedures more efficiently and to simplify complicated tasks.

Guesstimates such as How many ping-pong balls fit in a 747? are among the most unnerving interview questions you can receive.

We got used to video interviews during the pandemic. They've become the norm, and it's a good bet they're here to stay.

What you believe shapes the way you act. This means your beliefs about interviewing will influence how you prepare for and perform in interviews.

Imagine that your strong resume, work experience, and influential network lands you an interview at a prestigious private equity firm. Now what?

"Tell me about yourself. " Many people would agree that those four words comprise the most challenging sentence you can hear in an interview.

The theory of relativity: Five years to a whippersnapper like me is a different length of time to someone, say, my mom’s age. To me, five years is basically a lifetime, while to my mom, it goes by in the blink of an eye since she’s done more five-year cycles than I have (though she’ll yell at me if I tell you how many).

Wall Street used to be known as a "boys club," and media depictions of women in business didn't help. A decade ago New York Magazine was publishing stories like "Foxes of Wall Street," which rated women in finance by their looks.

Based in Richmond, Va. , Maury Nolen is a first-year associate in the Business Services Group at investment banking firm Harris Williams.

Although not every investment banking analyst who works in corporate finance or M&A for a  bank puts in 80 hours a week constantly throughout the year, many do just that. According to our most recent surveys 35 percent of corporate finance bankers say they work more than 80 hours per week, while 60 percent of M&A bankers say they work more than 80 hours each week.

As part of our ongoing series "A Day in the Life," here's a typical 13-hour period in the day of a merger and acquisition analyst at RBC Capital Markets (which has been called "The Goldman of Canada" in our Banking Surveys), proving that it's possible to work in M&A and leave before midnight. This analyst works in RBCCM's Toronto office.

After slogging away as an analyst and associate, working 93-hour workweeks, making under a measly $247,000 per year, you finally make it to VP. And that's when the big bucks start rolling in.

6:00 AM: Wake up. My day starts like a lot of other people's on Wall Street.

The most successful companies know that having a diverse workforce, especially in their leadership teams, strengthens their organizations. They know that a diverse staff strengthens company culture, improves decision making and problem solving, and gives them access to a wider, more diverse customer base—who increasingly want to work with diverse and inclusive organizations.

This past fall, Vault surveyed more than 3,000 investment banking professionals. We asked them to rate and comment on their firms’ benefits, compensation, culture, hours, and training, among other workplace factors.

Each year, Vault surveys thousands of investment banking professionals, asking them to rate their firms in several workplace categories. Today, on Women's Equality Day—which commemorates the passing of the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote—we took a close look at the differences between how male and female professionals rated their firms in our annual Banking Survey over the past decade.

It's hard to believe that, last week, in 27 U.S. states, it was legal to fire employees solely based on their sexual orientation—if they they were gay, bisexual, or transgender.

Employers talk a lot about diversity and inclusion. In fact, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a company that doesn’t say they’re diverse and inclusive.

Increasing diversity for women and implementing benefits that help women build their careers has been a focus of the accounting industry for many years. Top accounting firms have long been leaders when it comes to generous maternity leave policies, flexible schedule policies, and work-from-home options.