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Australia vs US Investment Banking Recruiting: Why the Timelines Are a Year Apart
Australia vs US Investment Banking Recruiting: Why the Timelines Are a Year Apart Same job, same desks, same eventual title. But an Australian student and a US student chasing investment banking are running two completely different races, on two completely different clocks. Australia gets you into the seat a year earlier. America pays more once you're in it. Neither system is better, they're just built on different assumptions about how long you need to prove yourself before anyone will bet on you. If you're an Australian student who has ever... Read more...
The Most Overrated Finance Jobs in Australia (And What Actually Pays Off)
The Most Overrated Finance Jobs in Australia (And What Actually Pays Off) There is a version of finance that exists for the first 30 seconds of a conversation, and a version that exists for the next four years of your career. Most students only optimise for the first one. According to Alex Euripidou, comp does not follow the prestige ranking of finance jobs at all, and neither does exit optionality. The loudest tier is not the winning tier, it is just the one that recruits at your uni with a... Read more...
Investment Banking Interview Prep by Desk, Not Industry
Investment Banking Interview Prep by Desk, Not Industry If you have ever sat in a library trying to memorise every technical concept in finance before a single interview, you have already made the mistake most students make. According to Alex Euripidou, what you get tested on is decided by the seat, not the industry, the LBO is everything in private equity and useless in trading, and the right move is to prep the column, not the whole book. That one line reframes the entire interview prep problem. Most students treat... Read more...
Is It Too Late to Start Investment Banking Recruiting in Australia?
Is It Too Late to Start Investment Banking Recruiting in Australia? I posted a reel this week that was meant to be a joke and the comments turned into a mini panic attack. "Bro already missed recruiting." "Too late to start unfortunately." "Should have started prepping cases earlier." One comment even joked he is going to end up the finance equivalent of a street sweeper because he did not start young enough. It is getting out of control, and that is exactly the caption I used, because the reaction says... Read more...
Is Investment Banking a Fake Career? The Pay vs Authenticity Trade-off
Is Investment Banking a Fake Career? The Pay vs Authenticity Trade-off If you have ever sat across from a first year analyst and thought "this person is performing a character," you were not imagining it. According to Alex Euripidou, the higher you climb in banking, law and consulting, the bigger the mask gets. High pay, high performance, zero authenticity is the trade a lot of graduates make without ever being told that is the deal. This is not a reason to avoid these careers. It is a reason to go... Read more...
Why Nobody Understands What Investment Bankers Actually Do
Why Nobody Understands What Investment Bankers Actually Do Every career sits somewhere on two axes: how easily people understand what you actually do, and how proud your parents are to tell people you do it. Doctors and pilots score high on both. They get a one-word explanation and an instant nod at the barbecue. Investment banking sits in a stranger spot entirely, respectable enough to brag about, but cryptic enough that nobody at the table can follow the explanation past the first sentence. That gap between prestige and legibility is... Read more...
Lifestyle Inflation in Investment Banking: Why the Bigger Salary Is the Bigger Trap
Lifestyle Inflation in Investment Banking: Why the Bigger Salary Is the Bigger Trap The bigger the salary, the bigger the trap. That is the blunt version of a pattern that shows up in almost every graduate who lands a big first-year comp package in investment banking, and it is worth understanding before your first bonus lands, not after it has already gone. According to Alex Euripidou, the real risk on a large finance salary is not the base pay or the bonus number itself, it is what happens to that... Read more...
Lifestyle Inflation in Investment Banking: Why the Bigger Salary Is the Bigger Trap
Lifestyle Inflation in Investment Banking: Why the Bigger Salary Is the Bigger Trap The bigger the salary, the bigger the trap. That is the blunt version of a pattern that shows up in almost every graduate who lands a big first-year comp package in investment banking, and it is worth understanding before your first bonus lands, not after it has already gone. According to Alex Euripidou, the real risk on a large finance salary is not the base pay or the bonus number itself, it is what happens to that... Read more...
Finance Jobs With the Best Work-Life Balance in Australia
The S Tier Finance Jobs Nobody Brags About (While IB, PE and Hedge Funds Burn Out in C and D) Everyone chasing a finance career in Australia says the same three words: investment banking, private equity, hedge funds. Almost nobody says corporate finance, wealth management, or corporate banking. That is not because those roles pay badly or lead nowhere. It is because the prestige conversation and the work-life balance conversation are two completely different rankings, and most students only ever hear about the first one. According to Alex Euripidou, corporate... Read more...
The 52 Largest Private Equity Investors in the World, Ranked
The 52 Largest Private Equity Investors in the World, Ranked Everyone assumes the biggest players in private equity are still the household buyout names, Blackstone, KKR and the rest of the classic sponsor world. That is only half true. When you actually rank the 52 largest private equity investors in the world, the buyout shops are still up top, but they are no longer alone up there. According to Alex Euripidou, out of the 52 largest private equity investors in the world, Blackstone still holds the number one spot, but... Read more...
The Advanced LBO Modelling Test: 3-4 Hours, a Take-Private and Every Trick a Mega-Fund Can Throw at You
Most people preparing for private equity interviews practise the wrong test. They drill a clean one-hour model with the financials handed to them in Excel, then walk into a later-round superday and get handed a 15-page packet, a blank workbook and four hours. Different game entirely. That harder version is the advanced LBO modelling test, and it is where a lot of otherwise strong candidates come unstuck. This is a plain-English breakdown of what it is, how it differs from the standard test, exactly which features it likes to bury... Read more...
The Hardest (and Easiest) Law Practice Groups To Get Into In Australia
The Hardest (and Easiest) Law Practice Groups To Get Into In Australia Everyone treats "getting into law" like one goal. It is not. Students talk about law as a single ladder, as if every seat at every firm sits at the same difficulty. It does not work like that. A White Shoe M&A seat in New York is near impossible, thousands of applicants chasing a handful of spots. A top Australian firm's tax or projects team is a completely different story, genuinely gettable if you are switched on and you... Read more...
The LBO Model Test, Solved: How a $1bn Coffee Company Returns 2.8x MOIC in Five Years
The LBO Model Test, Solved: How a $1bn Coffee Company Returns 2.8x MOIC in Five Years Everyone applying to private equity says they can "build an LBO." Almost nobody can do it under a timer, from a blank sheet, without a linking error blowing up the returns. That gap is exactly what the LBO model test is designed to find. According to Alex Euripidou, the standard 1-hour LBO model test built on JoeCo, a $1bn-revenue coffee company bought at 10.0x EBITDA with 6.0x of leverage, works out to a 2.8x... Read more...
Investment Bank Tier List Australia: The Two Axes That Actually Decide Your Career
Investment Bank Tier List Australia: The Two Axes That Actually Decide Your Career Everyone in Australia says they want to "get into banking." Almost nobody who says it can actually explain what that means, because "banking" isn't one job. It's a grid. Where you land on that grid, not whether you "got into banking," is what decides the career you actually end up with. According to Alex Euripidou, the exact same job title, M&A, can grade out as an SSS-tier career at a bulge bracket bank or roughly an A-tier... Read more...
Paper LBO Example: A Step-by-Step Walkthrough for PE Interviews
Paper LBO Example: A Step-by-Step Walkthrough for PE Interviews If a private equity interviewer says "let's do a quick paper LBO" and hands you nothing but a pen, they are testing whether the model already lives in your head, not whether you can build one in Excel. This guide is one clean, fully worked paper LBO example, built from scratch with numbers you can check, plus the mental-math shortcuts that get you through it in 5-10 minutes without a calculator. Every figure below was computed in Python first and rounded... Read more...
TMT Is 65% of US Investment Banking. Australia Runs on FIG and Mining Instead
TMT Is 65% of US Investment Banking. Australia Runs on FIG and Mining Instead Every second comment under a banking video is some version of "how do I break into tech banking". Fair enough, TMT (tech, media and telecom) coverage looks glamorous from the outside, it is the sector American finance content is built around. The problem is that most of the people asking are in Sydney or Melbourne, not New York, and the Australian market is not built the same way. According to Alex Euripidou, TMT accounts for roughly... Read more...
Team vs Firm: Which Actually Matters More For Grads
Is The Team More Important Than The Firm For A Graduate Job? Here Is The Real Answer Everyone asks "which firm should I aim for." That is the wrong question, or at least the incomplete one. Two graduates can join the same firm, on the same day, on the same graduate program, and ten years later be in completely different universes. Not because one worked harder. Because one landed on M&A and the other landed on IT audit. Same logo on the CV, same starting salary, wildly different trajectories. Prestige... Read more...
The Finance Jobs With the Best Pay to Hours Ratio in Australia
The Finance Jobs With the Best Pay to Hours Ratio in Australia (and Why Most Students Pick the Wrong Axis) Everyone picking a finance career asks the same question: what pays the most. Almost nobody asks the question that actually determines whether they'll be happy in five years: what pays the most for the hours it actually costs you. Those are not the same question, and mixing them up is how a lot of genuinely capable students end up in a seat that pays well and makes them miserable, when... Read more...
Is Quant Trading a Good Career in Australia? What the SBF Story Actually Teaches You
Is Quant Trading a Good Career in Australia? What the SBF Story Actually Teaches You Every second comment on a quant trading post says the same thing: "how do I get in." Fair question. The one nobody asks is the one that matters more: what happens to the people who already made it. Sam Bankman-Fried had the best seat in finance. Jane Street, the single most prestigious quantitative trading firm on earth. He walked away from it to start his own thing. Alameda Research, then FTX. Youngest billionaire on paper,... Read more...
Investment Banking Group Prestige Ranking: Why Your Group Matters More Than Your Bank
Investment Banking Group Prestige Ranking: Why Your Group Matters More Than Your Bank Most students obsess over which bank they get into. Bulge bracket versus boutique, tier 1 versus tier 2. Fewer stop to ask the sharper question: which group inside that bank did you land in. That is the gap this article closes. Group prestige is a real, separate axis from bank prestige, and if you are choosing between offers, or deciding which group to target in rotations or direct-to-group recruiting, it is arguably the more important call. What... Read more...
How Long Does It Take to Get Promoted to Manager in Australia
How Long Does It Actually Take to Get Promoted to Manager in Australia A LinkedIn profile doing the rounds recently showed someone going from intern to a senior leadership title in a handful of years, one step at a time, no gap, no lateral move sideways. It sparked exactly the reaction you would expect: half the replies said "that does not happen anymore," the other half said "that is literally what a target trajectory looks like if you are good and the company is growing." Both groups are right, depending... Read more...
Quant vs Venture Capital Career: Feedback Speed
Every finance career runs on the same rule: mastery takes about 10,000 hours. Malcolm Gladwell popularised that number and it gets thrown around a lot, but the number itself is not the interesting part. The interesting part is the clock. A quant gets graded in seconds. Every trade, every model, every prediction resolves almost instantly, and the market tells you if you were right or wrong before you have time to talk yourself into anything else. A venture capitalist makes a bet on a startup and does not find out... Read more...
How to Do a DCF in an Interview (Mental Math)
Every finance student learns the discounted cash flow model as a ten-tab spreadsheet. Terminal value, WACC build, sensitivity tables, the lot. Then they sit down in an interview, get handed a business with no laptop in front of them, and freeze. The analysts who look sharp in the room are not building that spreadsheet in their head. They are running a much shorter mental shortcut, and it gets them within a few percent of the real answer in under a minute. The shortcut is the rule of 72, and it... Read more...
Consulting Job Titles Explained: Why the Same Role Has Different Names in Australia
Here is a mistake that costs candidates an interview before they have even walked in: assuming a job title means the same thing everywhere. It does not. The same consulting role carries a different label depending on the city, the firm, and sometimes the practice you sit in.A Sydney "Associate Director" is a London or New York "Senior Manager." A Deloitte "Senior Consultant" is a PwC "Senior Associate." And "Associate" at McKinsey means something else again. If you are applying across regions or across firms without knowing this, you are... Read more...
MBB Australia Graduate: What the Hours and Pay Actually Look Like
Consulting is not one industry. It is five economic models wearing the same job title. An MBB Business Analyst and a mid-tier advisory graduate both say "I work in consulting" at a family dinner, but they sit on completely different clocks, pay and career trajectories.The hours are not a rostering accident. They are the moat. A firm billing a partner's time at half a million dollars a week to a Fortune 500 chief executive cannot run a 40 hour week. A firm doing mid-market operations work for a regional client... Read more...
Consulting to Investment Banking in Australia: The Real Trade
Here is what nobody tells you before you make the move: switching from consulting to investment banking in Australia will demote your title. A Manager becomes an Associate. A Senior Consultant becomes an Analyst. On paper, it looks like a step back. In your bank account, it is the opposite.That is the trade. You give up the title, you buy the ceiling. Most people find out about this swap after someone has already offered it to them, mid-negotiation, with no time to think it through. Know it before you are... Read more...
MBA to Investment Banking in Australia: Why the Degree Will Not Get You There
Here is the pitch every business school makes, in one form or another: do the MBA, reset your career, walk into whatever industry you want next, including investment banking. It is a compelling story. It is also, for the Australian market specifically, close to useless as a plan. The truth is simpler and less flattering to the degree: in Australia, MBA to IB is a dead end. In the US and UK it can work, but only from a small handful of schools, and even then you are not walking... Read more...
How to Get a Tech Graduate Job in Australia
Tech is the one elite Australian track where the WAM filter mostly does not apply. Coding ability and portfolio evidence beat transcript averages at almost every serious tech employer in the country. That cuts both ways: the door is open to students the finance system screens out, but the bar you actually have to clear is a live technical one, and it cannot be crammed the week before. Here is the real structure of the market: the three hiring lanes, the year-by-year build, what the screens actually test, and where... Read more...
How to Get a Clerkship in Australia
Australian commercial law runs on one gate: the penultimate year clerkship. Combined Top Tier clerkship intake is roughly 300-400 seats per year nationally, the whole system compresses into a four-month application window, and 70-90% of strong clerks convert to graduate offers. Miss the cycle and you wait a full year. The market itself is small enough to map: roughly 60-80 commercial firms worth applying to, stratified across five tiers. Here is how the system actually works. What the clerkship path actually is A clerkship is a 4-10 week paid placement... Read more...
How to Get Into Consulting in Australia
Management consulting in Australia is dominated by three firms and misunderstood by most applicants. McKinsey, BCG and Bain hire roughly 60-90 Business Analysts and Associate Consultants per year combined across Sydney and Melbourne. That is the entire MBB graduate intake for the country. Everything below them is a distinct tier with its own cutoffs, its own pay band and its own entry mechanics. Here is how the system actually works: the tiers, the timeline, the case prep volume, and the sequencing that decides who gets in. What the path actually... Read more...
How to Break Into Investment Banking in Australia
Australian investment banking is a small market. Roughly 100 firms worth applying to, two cities that matter (Sydney and Melbourne), and one shared recruiting calendar. That makes it mappable. The students who land bulge bracket offers know the firm tier system cold by Year 2. The students who miss out are still asking their careers adviser what UBS does. This is the real mechanics of breaking in: the timeline, the cutoffs, the tiers, and the sequencing. No motivational filler. What the path actually is Almost every graduate seat in Australian... Read more...