Jarus:

Let me attempt to analyse some of these instituions based on what I know about them.

VETIVA
I had a brief stint there in 2007, pre-NYSC and till today I'm still a friend of the company. They are a very nice set of people. I met their MD in my present company(both of us were waiting for the elevator) and he easily recognized me. I have also met their company secretary and other top notch recently, after leaving the company. We still relate. I still use one of them as my referee even till now.
Vetiva is a well-paying organization, but you'll work your ass off. By 5pm, the day is just starting, if you get what I mean!
You will be trained on the job. I joined them just weeks after finishing university, and that was my first work experience.
They maintain a small staff strenght of about 25 staff, 20% of which are either NYSC or Pre-NYSC. They don't take just any corper, you write their standard test and interview, and they give you the job and pay you 50k monthly plus free lunch, with the intention of using your service year to assess your capability. If you perform well, they will staff you, and welcome to money! The common route for employing fresh graduates in the company is through this pre-NYSC and NYSC arrangement, but some people have criticized this as cheap labour(you work for more than one year, earning just 50K). Sometimes though, they hire fresh graduates that had served elsewhere.
But in any case, as a permanent staff, entry level, your monthly take-home is in the region of 200K. But where the bulk of your income will come is from the profit sharing and other bonus schemes. Being a company with small staff strenght, but huge profits, an entry level may receive up to a million, if not more, as share of profit.
Another thing mention-worthy is that they hold their annual retreat abroad every year and all staff, including corpers, go.
Also, if you are in corporate finance, you will have the opportunity of meeting who-is-who in corporate Nigeria through the various meetings you hold with them. In my brief stay there, I had the rare priviledge of meeting and interacting with CEOs and EDs I see on newspapers.
All in all, Vetiva is a very good company pay- and exposure-wise, but if you are the weak type that easily fall sick, then please don't go near.

IBTC Asset Mgt:
I wrote the tests and interviews of IBTC and Vetiva around the same time(Dec 2006) and I landed offer from both,and asked to resume same day (Jan 3, 2007). But for some personal reasons,I chose Vetiva. My brother, who we live under the same roof, is the MD of IBTC Asset Mgt(IAML), and I didn't want us to be in same company.
I will not say much about IAML but it's a very good company. The pay for pre-NYSC and NYSC during that time was 60k and 106k respectively, but I learnt they have slashed it to 30K now. Like, Vetiva, they recruit you standardly, not just any posting from camp. You write test and interviews like normal entry level recruitment, and after service you will be staffed but their take-home, for entry level, is not as high as that of Vetiva, but they have avery good training culture. Unlike Vetiva, they have a more standard promotion structure.some of my friends also had brief stints there before moving to P&G and Shell, and a couple are still there.

BGL
One of my closest friends worked briefly with them before moving to Glo and later GTB. Pitiably, he didn't say good about them. They are not that structured and pay package is somehow arbitrary. You will see somebody of your level earning higher than you and there will be no clear explanation for the differential. They however have the brand as a force to reckon with in Nigeria's investment banking system.

MERRISTEM
This is another coy I know quite much about. The whole of their research dept was once dominated by my friends in Ife Economics and Accounting. The current head of their research was my tutorial teacher in Ife(two years my senior, TKB's classmate) and still very close to me. One of his subordinates was my class mate and another my immediate junior. And a number of my friends were there briefly in 2007/2008.
To go straight to the point, as a corper or Pre-NYSC staff, you collect 50K per month, after being staffed or recruited fresh as an entry level you collect around 166K per month take-home. This was as at mid-last year. I'm not sure of what goes on there now.
All in all, Merristem is another company with great prospect. If you join them and stay,you can easily rise as they expand.
Their MD is also a family friend.

GREENWICH
One of my close classmates work here but I don't know mucha bout them

AFRIBANK CAPITAL
I have a friend here too, but I don't know much about them. But I have a feeling taht their pay is OK.

ZENITH CAPITAL
I don't have exact figures about their packages, but for somebody to move from Vetiva, despite their pay, to Zenith Capital makes me suspect there are some goodies there too. A former colleague of mine in Vetiva, with masters from Cambridge, did that.

PS: This is just a well-intended sharing of job information. No intention of bad-mouthing any organization, just as any figure quoted here is not authoritative.

1-fine,in 2007- early '08, most of these investment banking institutions were doing great,most esp the consolidatn period, but do you still think they re maintaining that standard in this economic crises and which amongst them can we vote to still be floating well, too bad most of them are not public companies,we could have gotten an EPS and CAPM analysis of their share and capital&riskiness status.

2-As regards your comment on entry into that sector,you never mentioned the traditional skills set and necessary grad qualification to penetrate the sector at entry level(most think u have to get a CFA, MBA b4 u can get in but i disagree, PASSION is it and a good numerical discipline degree/qualificatn!!).And dont u think things are a little tight now with the events in the economy.Also considering that most of their recruitment offers are not publicized like that, for me i ve not seen any in the papers or online.

3-I was reading somewhere on NL where TKB was replying to a guy as regards the 'sweetness' of the operational aspect of inv. banking which he refers to as the 'real thing' as against the marketing side, are there different qualificatns to achieve these.

Good to know that u know TKB, u guys finished from Ife,hmmmm, no comment.

Jarus:

Investment banking has different aspects(Corporate Finance, Stockbroking, Wealth/asset mgt, Trade/project finance etc), and some of these institutions have different aspects as their stronghold. For example, when I was in one of these institutions(Vetiva, to be precise), we were very strong in Corporate Finance and in fact there was hardly any big merger and acquisition and capital raising exercise we didn't partake in, whether as issuing house or financial adviser. Our hands were full then, and we even had to be rejecting some offers we considered too small. This was during the banking/insurance consolidation period. However, we were not very strong in stockbroking and asset management. When it comes to asset management, IBTC easily had it then.

damn, dis is the best forum eva, currently servin at a securites firm, in fact, currently running the place as me boss is in ghana for cfa and Musa the second in command is just an ignorant figure head, and i have major plans for investment bankin, dis has been a lotta help, tanx a lot folks,

true IB is quite diverse but like my boss says, d bread and butter is still stockbroking, issuing house deals dont come in dat often, how reaally true is dis,

I thought STANBIC IBTC is a top two INV Bank? Shocked

I mean from what i have heard and read!

seunallday:

how come nobody is mentioning ARM?

You will be trained on the job. I joined them just weeks after finishing university, and that was my first work experience.

Jarus:

I don't think any rating will put Stanbic IBTC outside Top 3. I'm also quite shocked T-Cann's rating.
IBTC's founder,Atedo Peterside, is the father of investment banking in Nigera. They are a force to reckon with in investment banking in Nigeria.

MrCrackles:

Yeah back in the day when it was called IBTC, it was a major player

The merger with Stanbic, was supposed to have safe gaurded it's posotion atop and shoot up it's ratings!

seunallday:

i tink ARM is a silent major player as well, plus i hrd theyr one of the few nt very exposed to margin, hrd they jst bought a stockbrokin house so they should be aiming for the top too,

as far as stanbic ibtc is concerned, i dont tink they lost their edge, i tink they got more consmer banking edge and theier operations are just more diluted, plus ibtc asset mgt, and esp ibtc pensions are big time players,

diamond bank also has a strong investment arm from wat i hear, hrd george soros is interested in d joint

I would say they are still big. There's no more an investment banking niche (I may be wrong, me I be engineer!) as it was in those days when IBTC was a 100% investment banking-focused operation. Looks like the banks are now more into commercial banking, and they all have an asset management spin-off or subsidiary focusing on the investment banking side.
Obviously Stanbic IBTC is yet to establish itself as a major player in commercial banking. I'm sure Stanbic IBTC Asset Management is a very strong player

tkb417:

hmm, are you sure of what you just said?
i work in a strictly Investment banking outfit
A foreign from one of the cold countries that specialises only in emerging markets

tkb,
I was referring to Nigerian banks actually. You said you work in a foreign outfit abi.
Since this consolidation thingie, they all seem to be commercial-banking focused, while the asset management firms are the ones doing investment banking.

I know IBTC quite well, especially before recapitalization exercise forced them to join Chartered.
I think Peterside made a mistake obtaining universal banking licence. The universal banking licence they had, but not operated, made N25b capital base requirement cover them and they were left with no other option than to merge with Chartered and acquire one other small bank(can't remember the name). They couldn't make their marks in commercial banking, given the fact that all the Zeniths, GTBs, UBAs, FBNs, UBNs of this world are having a firm grip of the market and it will take a miracle to outsmart them in their traditional terrain. It was therefore only inevitable that Peterside gave the bank to Standard bank of SA, a major player in this terrain in African market.
Yet, about 2 years after, we are still expecting to see what the miracle the SA guys want to perform to compete with the Zeniths of this world.

In any case, if IBTC had remained the Investment Banking and Trust Company Ltd it was pre-merger or more critically, pre-obtaining universal banking licence, then this topic would have been IBTC and others. Their investment banking subsidiary,(SIAML) proudly headed by my bros, is no doubt still a force to reckon with in their primary constituency, and with the quintessential Yewande Sadiku and Funso Akere calling the shots in their Corporate Finance Division, I don't think any informed rating will put IBTC outside top 3 in investment banking ranking in Nigeria. But commercial banking, we can only hope for the good. . .

tkb,
are you guys doing venture capital?
I have a project that needs financing, do you guys finance a good business plan or you only go for the known cash cows?

tkb417:


Investment Banking is cool, brain tasking, energy consuming and really rewarding
as for T-cann
you need to be all analytic, energic and be ready to spend long hours and weekends working on your mandates
some coys dont employ if you dont have the Mscs, First Class and the rest but its not really hard to figure

Just get yourself enrolled in CFA and get the level 1 passed and i can bet, you can enter one of those coys
if you have ACCA, ICAN and co with ur B.sc, you can hit up places like Stanbic BGL and co and they will be ready to take you in
But bros, the work can worry ooo

so guys, lets talk, CFA guys are in town.
We are probably gonna have our 9ja CFA soooooooon

tkb417:

well said bro!!



i dont think it will take them many years to compete with the others [b]but i see other smaller investment banking outifts springing up [/b]and taking a chunk of what would have been originally IBTCs meat.

lets see, the market is becoming bouyant and im gettin tipsy
who says, i may be in Stanbic tmr if they can match my wage

bros got a 2.1 from lag, economics, CIS level 2, gunnin for CFA nxt June, wat do u tink my chances are,

on the CFA issue, i hope soon enuff oo, cos na dubai moni dey chase me from december ooo,

tkb417:


yes, that prob will soon be over.

2:1 econs will get you anywhere you want to work and when u finish ur CIS, the ure already a hotcake
but why CIS? u wanna be a stockbroker?

my oga. let us talk outside the curtain

if ur biz is compelling enuff, then you dont have to worry
no fund raising outfit will run away from any compelling biz case