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- Feb 16, 2005
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- 2006
There are heaps of things that a Finance major (in a Commerce degree) does not teach you about in relation to what you learn in IB.
From the IB friends I have (mainly in the Corporate/M&A space), the only thing they learnt in their Finance major that was relevant to their role in IB was the fundamentals of finance (e.g. basic valuation techniques). They have never touched anything more sophisticated than that and most of the fancier stuff they learn in their training courses was never taught in any unit of study they did at university.
It may be different in the Markets space but the general consensus I got from friends in IB was that very little of the concepts you learn at university in a Finance major is actually needed for the role in IB. Most people (including non-Finance majors) are on a level playing field in terms of knowledge when starting out as grads in IB and the training they receive brings most people up to scratch.
To add to this, a Finance major alone really does not say anything about your 'interest in the financial markets'. Sure, you can have all the technical tools from that major but what that statement really means is how closely you follow all the developments in the finance world. This is something that is weighted heavily in the IB recruitment process (it is a common interview question "tell me about recent developments in financial markets") and is something driven by your own initiative in regularly keeping up to date with the news, not driven by university studies.
If someone has a strong interest in the finance world but did not explicitly study a Finance major to gain the technical knowledge (I know heaps of people who are like this) then that person may be preferred over someone who actually did complete a Finance major with all the technical knowledge but has little interest in following finance news (all things being equal).
From the IB friends I have (mainly in the Corporate/M&A space), the only thing they learnt in their Finance major that was relevant to their role in IB was the fundamentals of finance (e.g. basic valuation techniques). They have never touched anything more sophisticated than that and most of the fancier stuff they learn in their training courses was never taught in any unit of study they did at university.
It may be different in the Markets space but the general consensus I got from friends in IB was that very little of the concepts you learn at university in a Finance major is actually needed for the role in IB. Most people (including non-Finance majors) are on a level playing field in terms of knowledge when starting out as grads in IB and the training they receive brings most people up to scratch.
To add to this, a Finance major alone really does not say anything about your 'interest in the financial markets'. Sure, you can have all the technical tools from that major but what that statement really means is how closely you follow all the developments in the finance world. This is something that is weighted heavily in the IB recruitment process (it is a common interview question "tell me about recent developments in financial markets") and is something driven by your own initiative in regularly keeping up to date with the news, not driven by university studies.
If someone has a strong interest in the finance world but did not explicitly study a Finance major to gain the technical knowledge (I know heaps of people who are like this) then that person may be preferred over someone who actually did complete a Finance major with all the technical knowledge but has little interest in following finance news (all things being equal).