Function of Investment banking Division of a (Investment) Bank can always be divided into these 3 roles whereas in a universal bank, coverage function involves not only fee business advisory roles but also comprehensive product/package financial solution including as much as it can of the bank's product offering.

 

Practically, the origination segment is among most technical of the 3 groups, while the main responsibility of Coverage team is to identify initial opportunities, maintain good relationship with clients and regulators, and the execution team responsible for the documentation, on-going ad hoc requirements and advising internal issues and providing consistent technical support in terms of valuation, markets monitoring and structure optimization.

 

It is always a belief that nothing can be done by one hero, but the word "Teamwork" is defined differently among various banks. In the US banks, teamwork is defined to be working very hard around several key star bankers, while the teamwork requiring you to concentrate more or most of your strength and initiatives to the ideas/connections from the star bankers' . In European banks, atmoshpere is more harmoney and less individual heroism, and emphasis is put on how to create synergies from their global network. Having said this, nowadays the trends are becoming converging as the European banks begin to become more individual performance focused in order to develop the less sophisticated but more uncertain businesses in the emerging markets.

 

The nature of the investment banking business is also evolving as traditional merchant banking function has become  the foundamental base of the current comprehensive financial solution for growing markets. Much larger return can be obtained from direct investment in nowadays raising opportunities, making the tradition fee business an intermediary product from the financial solution as part of the whole structured package, with the associated time cost longer than traditional fee only business.

 

(To be continued)

 ABN AMRO Rostchild

ABN AMRO Asia Corporate Finance LLC