Investment-bank

This booklet gives a great overview of the "inner-workings" of Chase. This is really an awesome company. The Wet Feet Guide totally helped me to prepare for a string of recent interviews with them. VERY useful information... including some great ideas re: potential interview questions (many of which I used). The only downfall: the current edition was printed prior to the merger with JP Morgan... so I had to figure out what affect that merger is having on the company via other sources. (per the grapevine, the merger is apparently affecting each business unit differently; i.e. no real impact within National Consumer Services... but significant impact in other areas). Other than that, this book is a great start-- and helped me to better understand vital info about the company -- including the Chase culture. BUY IT!!

This book is not only for job seekers to get a job in Citibank, but also for those who are interested to know more about how Citibank selects its most important asset, human capital.

Also this book will tell you why some promising bankers in the making may not necessary able to fit themselves into Citibank criteria of selection despite the belief that Citibank is an excellence training ground for future leading bankers. To know why, read this book.

BL

While developments in this industry move very fast, this book remains one of my favourites for covering the basics of structured derivatives.

On such a topic, it is very easy to get carried away with complex mathematics and jargon, but this author handles the task very well. Topics such as quantifying risk, measuring swap valuations and understanding complex options are explained in a way most of us will understand.

This book is not for the beginner, but is more aimed at those with an average or above average understanding of derivatives.

Barry Schachter does a wonderful job of compiling the pros and cons of the complex derivative market.

This book is complete with real world data on trading activities, the usage of derivatives, and the possible systemic risk associated with these practices.

I enjoyed this books straight forward and easy to understand format which made it simple to evaluate the issues facing our complex banking system.

This book could easily have gotten a five star review from me if it wasn't for my one and only complaint.

My only complaint has to do with the date of publication, not with any of the information (or lack of information) presented in this book.

I am curious how the author would view more recent issues including the possible clasped of several major Japanese banks, Enron, and the current crisis in Argentina.

KC

supposed to be one of the best books available as informed to me by our developers on banking area, will be very useful.

This is the only book that covers all of the aspects of performance management in banking : 1. the analysis of performance measurement is very good even though, the coverage of financial data is overweight with respect to the rest of the book 2. the project approach is excellent and the various "pitfalls" described are so true that the people that wrote it necessarily had a good project experience, only problem is that the system architectures described did not evolve with the new edition (the word "data warehouse" is evoked once or twice) 3. As usual with this type of books, the "using the information" chapters are a bit a dry, even thought some interesting ideas are described regarding "customer information" In summary, a must read for any person trying to implement a performance indicators or Balanced Scorecard systm in its bank ("financial institutions" in the title is actually retail or commercial banking) PS : I am not an E & Y employee ... so this is not an advertising review

This book is well-written and explains the different businesses and roles of investment banks. Mr. Bloch brings down to earth complex topics such as IPO's, Venture Capital, Underwritings and other investment banking subjects. Though it hasn't been updated, the book contains a lot of information about the core issues of investment banking. Also, there is an excelent description of the evolution of the investment banking business and how technology, changes in regulations and the increasing power of institutions has changed the investment banking landscape. The book is very helpfull because Mr. Bloch uses a clear language to explain investment banking subjects and he avoids excesive use of jargon. The reader must take into account that though it's a great book, the investment banking lanscape has changed a lot since the 90's.

I was very satisfied with the information I found in this book. I really prepared me well for inventerviews I had with many of the i-banks. The only drawback I found was that you could get all of the information, which was in book, online too. Also, in todays consolidating financial services industry, the book can quickly become outdated. However, overall, I was very satisfied.

The book is great for those who are interested in the investment banking industry and want to get a a better idea of what J.P. Morgan is really like. The authors do a really good job of stepping away from the brochure-mentality and the information is almost as valuable as the information you would get from a close friend who works there. The fresh and candid "insider" perspective is ideal for assessing what the culture is like.

Robert Sobel wrote the best biography of Calvin Coolidge I have seen so far, which means best of five. Even better than Coolidge's autobiography. His contextualization of Coolidge included astute observations on the American economy, and on Wall Street in particular. So I searched out this out of print book on an online service and began to read. To Dillon Read.

This is the firm which gave us George H.W. Bush's treasury secretary, Nicholas Brady, whom Sobel also covers pretty thoroughly in this book, hinting that his undergrad grades were not so hot and that he may be dyslexic. But great connections.

Clarence Dillon is the star of the book, which starts with the Dutchman Vermilye and his investment trading operation in New York. Dillon joins after Read joins, and Dillon is the gutsy Jewish guy (although Dillon cloaks that in an effort to run with the WASP dominators of New York at the time) who engineers brash and bold, huge deals, then makes a lot more money by taking over companies (buying them by lending them money) and hiring "management" firms secretly owned by....Clarence Dillon.

The Pecora hearings are profiled, and Sobel gets into the 1933 and 1934 Securities laws and the SEC, giving us the impression that Pecora was a little extreme, and the SEC--although harshly received by the "Street" at the time--was a pretty good idea.

Sobel does not stop there, though. He follows the Dillon Read firm past Clarence, and on to Douglas (who also became a Secretary of the Treasury, but who didn't have the same pizzazz of the old man, who drifted off into old age in aristocratic fashion on a huge New Jersey estate). Then on to the Bechtel and Wallenberg family connections of Dillon Read, and terminating in the mid 1980s with a glimpse of new ways-a-borning with the addition of New Court Capital and the opening of the firm to modern V.C. investment.

A great companion to this book is the very recent book "The Last Partnerships" which does the same biographical analysis of our entire economy, by profiling a whole collection of investment firms, Dillon Read included. Sobel has less range, in comparison, but Sobel's mission is to drill into Dillon Read. This book does not "sing" like Sobel's Coolidge, as I said, but forms a link in Sobel's scholarship which I'm glad to have. Next will come a read of Sobel's history of the New York Stock Exchange, to lengthen the chain.