Tl;dr: Part of a collection of real examples of M&A investment banking slides. This blog covers Research Analysts. See the PowerPoint presentations investment bankers are paid millions for. No matter your job, or your aspirations, you can learn from these slides.
This is part of a collection of 67 free M&A presentations from the top 20 banks (based on ranking, and also the quality of presentation for you to learn from).
Collection of M&A slide examples
The main page for all the M&A resources is here.
I have broken out 827 examples of slides across 32 sections. You can click through to the section you want to learn about next here:
Is this blog for you?
Why the heck should you care? Investment banks (historically) attracted the best and the brightest.
- Slide structure/design: Learn how complicated concepts are structured and designed in PowerPoint
- Analysis approach: See exactly how complex financial methods are presented
- Strategy and communication: M&A deals are not (normally, other than many Duff and Phelps decks) cookie cutter. There’s a host of topics that need to be dealt with
- Morbid interest: I used to do this for a living, but it’s still interesting to see how PPT are made… but then maybe it’s just me and so FML 😉
Who this will help:
- You want to work in banking: There’s a lot of applicants. Knowing the job helps you answer questions
- You work in banking: Even if you’re an MD, you need to know how the best are structuring their thoughts/analysis
- You write presentations: You can’t buy learnings like this. You can learn from the slides
- You have a curious mind: Good for you
About Research Analysts
They don’t matter as much as they used to, but basically, banks hired nerds who write huge ass papers about companies. Their “initiation of coverage” reports are normally epic reading. I love the shite out of those. So, those nerds were paid for by selling other services, so basically subsidized. Eh, then things went wrong and the SEC or something was like “you should pay for research”. Everyone in finance was like, oh FFS.
They still exist, but it’s all a bit messed up. If I ping a friend at a hedge fund for some reports he will say no as he is worried about getting caught. Everything is watermarked etc.
Why these slides are made
Broker reports (research analysts) will always matter to a point. You care about institutional investors, so so long as institutional investors read broker reports, you care what they say and think.
Comments on making these slides
In my day it was easy to get broker reports. But over a few years things started getting harder. Now, good luck. You pretty much have to pay per report. Everything has become a pain in the ass in banking. Compliance box-checking is a large part of your shitty existence. If you’re at a proper bank, you’ll get access to what you want, just not liberally.
There are two big boxes of “research analyst” shizzle you will do.
- Quantatative: Sneaky time, population you. You’re going to parse documents really fast and basically pull out anything that sounds smart and put it in a quote box.
- Qualitative: There are loads of analyses you can do with analyst numbers. You can compare them to management forecasts, you can aggregate the numbers, show buy/hold/sell signals, make charty stuff bla bla
Some of the analysis is easier to do in the USA. You have Factset and it seems to be ok to rely on that. In Europe at least, you can’t rely on shite so you have to do everything manually.
This analysis is about as simple as you can do. It’s just boring work.
Examples of Research Analysts
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