What does a Investment Banker actually do?

The short version

Investment bankers advise on and execute the biggest transactions in business — mergers, acquisitions, capital raises. It's the career where the pay is genuinely elite and the hours are genuinely brutal, and both halves of that sentence are true at once.

The pitch: the highest-paying graduate route in the UK, a brand on the CV that opens almost every door afterwards, and a defined exit to private equity or corporates. The catch: 60–80 hour weeks are real, the analyst funnel filters hard, and AI is already compressing the junior grind that used to be the way in.

Entry routes that actually work

• Spring week → internship → analyst — the dominant route; apply first year, convert each stage.
• Graduate scheme — direct analyst programmes; university brand still filters hard.
• CFA / Masters conversion — helps laterals and non-target-university candidates.