Area of work
Global Structured Finance

Studied
Masters in Mathematics, Durham University

Joined
2007

Working in
London

I work in leveraged finance within Global Structured Finance. As high leveraged debt is inherently risky there is a lot of background work to do for each transaction, so my role consists mainly of researching, comparing and structuring the debt. I analyse the companies involved, keep an eye on the progress of the companies that we've done deals with in the past and also a lot of modelling work. As I come from a maths background I find the mathematical modelling one of the most interesting parts of my role. It's an involved process examining the particular sensitivities of each model, inputting the figures and working out the risks and probabilities.

I like the mix of the things that I do at the moment. I follow the markets regularly and see things that I'm involved with reported in the FT. There's a company that I'm researching at the moment, a quite well known USD300 million industrial company, and I'm enjoying finding out about the company and really looking deeply into its business. I have to read through all the relevant documents provided by the company, examine the due diligence, and then search for other documentation, broker reports etc and analyse all of this for the credit paper we're writing. The credit paper will be presented to an internal committee and from there we'll make a decision about whether or not it's a good business to get involved with. The last deal I worked on was approved by the credit committee and it's definitely one of the most satisfying moments of my role, seeing all that hard work pay off.

It's been a very steep learning curve for me since I started with no financial markets background at all. The graduate training programme has been very, very interesting, and initially it was very useful in raising my financial knowledge and giving me the skills I needed to be able get straight to work. When I started we had two-weeks in the office getting oriented, and then I went on a training course for about a month with all of the other graduates who had started at the same time as me. I found the accountancy and the excel side of the training very interesting and also passed my FSA exams and gained a broad understanding of the rest of the bank from talking to the other graduates who mostly came from Sales, Trading or Debt Capital Markets. Since then I've done a one-day course on how to communicate effectively with clients and recently I did a week's training course in Paris with Fitch. We learnt how to quickly assess financial statements and analyse companies for financial and operational strength. It was a great experience, not only for the training but because we would finish at five or six in the evening and could then experience Paris in the evenings.

There are people here from many different backgrounds; in my team there's people from Mexico, India, South Africa, France and of course the UK as well. This multicultural environment seems to be quite common throughout the bank and if anything it draws us closer together. My team is very tight-knit, friendly and not internally competitive, probably helped by the regular team drinks we have. This close relationship we have helps us when we're under pressure for a deadline. The last deal I worked on was pretty intense and we had to work late some nights. I didn't mind though, it's part of the job in investment banking and it was actually a great adrenaline rush, the fact that we were all in it together and determined to get things done no matter what.