Meet eight impressive investment banking analysts starting out in the City of London

Investment banks have just welcomed a new batch of analysts in the City of London. As ever, those breaking into a front office job will have beaten stiff competition to the role, so what does it really take? We’ve profiled a select group of impressive new analysts who have started out in June. The entire analyst classes arrive in August.

Joseph Roysten-Bailey, investment banking, Centerview Partners

Route to a finance job: Centerview Partners is supposedly the hardest bank to interview at, and boutiques only hire a handful of new analysts. Joseph is therefore in an enviable position. An LSE Economics graduate, with a first class degree, he interned in J.P. Morgan’s TMT UK coverage team last summer and also spent an insight week at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in 2015. Impressively, he was chairman of the LSE’s Alternative Investment conference for the past two years – an annual event that brings together big names from private equity and hedge funds – as well as taking part in the finance and business societies.

Interesting fact: He was in the England rugby under-16 squad while at school.

Grigorii Shchennikov, investment banking, Deutsche Bank

Route to a finance job: Grigorii has a Masters in Finance from Bocconi, which is a target school for investment banks in London despite being in Milan. He's interned within Goldman Sachs’ TMT and leveraged finance division, but spent last summer at Deutsche Bank within its real estate, gaming and leisure investment banking team.

Interesting fact: While studying for his undergraduate degree in economics from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, he launched a website aimed at “providing the book recommendations of outstanding people”.

Sercan Demirtas, private equity group, Goldman Sachs

Route to a finance job: Sercan studied investment management at McGill University and has single-mindedly pursued an immediate move to the buy-side. He spent a summer in BNP Paribas’ investment bank in 2015, but also joined Polomino Capital in the same year for a six-month off-cycle internship. In 2016, he came to London as a summer analyst in Goldman Sachs’ private equity group and successfully converted into a full-time offer.

Interesting fact: He co-managed a $4m student-run investment firm while studying.

Jack Curran, investment banking analyst, Nomura

Route to a finance job: Jack interned at Nomura as off-cycle analyst within its TMT investment banking team in January - his only banking experience up until this point. He's also interned at management consulting firm Accipio, private equity firm Foresight Group and law firm Carey Olsen. He has both an economics degree from University College London (UCL) and a Masters in Banking and International Finance from Cass Business School that he completed in 2016. In other words, he managed to secure an investment banking job outside of the regular recruitment cycle.

Interesting fact: He spent a month after graduation as a development manager on a crowd-sharing platform for volunteering opportunities.

William Robinson, investment banking analyst, Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Route to a finance job: William graduated from Warwick University with a degree in economics, where he was also president of its economics society. He has two summer internships under his belt – initially at Barclays in 2015, and then at BAML the following year, which he converted into a full-time role.

Interesting fact: He competed in the National Swimming Championship, in the 100m and 200m backstroke.

Marcus Rosengren, investment banking analyst, J.P. Morgan

Route to a finance job: Marcus has a degree in economics, accounting and finance degree from Stockholm School of Economics (SSE), and joined J.P. Morgan’s diversified industries team in June. He interned on this desk last summer, and also spent a summer at Danica Pension in Stockholm. He was also an alpine skiing head coach for three years in Sweden.

Interesting fact: He started a clothing company linking China and Sweden while still at school.

Adrian Ahmadhi, investment banking analyst, Morgan Stanley

Route to a finance job: Adrian also studied in Sweden, both at SSE and KTH Royal Institute of Technology, where he completed a masters in applied and computational mathematics. He interned at Morgan Stanley last summer in London last year and secured a full-time role, but this follows a three-month stint in Credit Suisse’s prime services division and a host of spring internships at Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley and Nordea Markets.

Interesting fact: He worked for nearly a year and a half as a part-time analyst at private equity firm Procuritas Partners until December last year.

George Mandres, trading analyst, Goldman Sachs

Route to finance: George has just completed an economics and statistics degree at UCL, and has multiple internships under his belt. He was a securities spring intern at Goldman Sachs in 2015, and spent the summer of that year as a summer analyst at Man GLG, as well as completing the insight programme in September at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. He interned at Goldman Sachs last year, rotating across various trading desks. He settled on sovereign financials, CDS and illiquid credit.

Interesting fact: George came to the attention of Goldman Sachs by winning its EMEA student challenge in 2015, which secured a £9,000 scholarship and a spring internship at the bank.

Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com

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