HydrogenRainbow, good luck to your interview and let us know your good new 
numi Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > That may be the case, and given the current state > of the deal environment, it’s definitely true that > a lot of groups are doing more pitching and less > execution right now since there aren’t that many > deals happening. I’m no expert on the Asian > markets, but what I’m trying to understand is that > you originally stated that analysts at boutique > firms arguably have more deal exposure than at BB > banks in your part of the world. But if the > overall deal environment is not great and the > Singapore market is so small, why is it that deals > would happen at the boutique level but not at the > bulge bracket level? And if the Asian bankers at > the BB’s are doing pitching only, then who’s doing > the actual deal execution? Help me understand what > you’re getting at, because at least in the US, > analysts at the top BB banks almost invariably > have better exit opportunities than at the top > boutiques because of their deal experience. At least for 1st year analysts, it probably is that you’d get to do stuff and be more involved in the deal execution than analysts in the BB. I am sorry if it appeared that I was saying that there are more deals done at the boutique level. The bulk of it still goes to firms like GS and MS. But if you were to compare side by side a junior analyst from a boutique firm that won a certain deal and a junior analyst from a BB that won a certain deal,what I heard is that the latter will be spending the bulk of his time doing the pitch books,zapping of reports,downloading reports from Factiva and yada yada, and it is more likely that the former is more involved in the deal execution. What I was trying to say was, As a matter of fact, when I was interning at JPMorgan (I was not with the Investment Banking Coverage Division), my fellow intern at the Investment Banking Coverage Division was doing weird stuff like editing the font size in the pitch book for the analyst. One weird thing she once had to do was, to record the price of a certain stock in 15min intervals. Goodness knows what the heck that was for? However, I have read in forums that interns at the BBs in the US/UK do a lot more than that! It appears that it is only the senior Analysts/Associates that get more involved in the deal execution, and the most involved in the deal execution are the Associates/ VPs and perhaps a couple of ADs. There definitely are pros and cons with starting off in a boutique firm. The salary at a BB definitely is alluring, and for sure, there is a lot more room to move around, i.e. if you find that Investment Banking is not for you, you could still move to another area of work, say Credit Risk Management (I know one lady within JPM who did that),Product Control, or Operations if the person is more interested in process enhancement. There definitely is also the option of relocation, especially at JPMorgan which really supports mobility (though it is highly possible that you relocate on a Singapore pay package, and that is #$%& if you relocate to expensive places like HK and London). That said, if you are at a top boutique firm, is there a good chance you can move into the BB ?
Thought I’d point to this summary article on how to talk about compensation: http://shiftingcareers.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/22/fridays-links-how-to-talk-or-not-talk-about-salary-and-other-interviewing-pointers/?scp=1-b&sq=About+Salary%2C+and+Other+Interviewing+Pointers&st=nyt
SGD $40,000??? That’s about USD $27K. That’s insane. I pay more than that in taxes alone.