The Age of the Everything Banker Is Here: Get Ready for Odd Jobs
Faced with leaner times, dealmakers stretch to help their clients any way they can.
Wall Street bankers feasted on mergers and acquisitions over the past five years, ringing up fees by the billions for a fairly straightforward task: combine two companies to make something bigger. Now the job is getting more complicated.
Although deals and stock offerings are starting to come back, the pandemic and a volatile market made them tougher to execute. In the absence of continuous, big-ticket takeovers, investment bankers found themselves providing more informal advice for clients and would-be clients on everything from supply chain disruptions to how to handle a trade war, or the best way to position a company for the outcome of the U.S. election. All of this to stay on top of the call list when a company starts looking for help with its next deal. In short, bankers have to know more and do more—including the occasional odd job. “The renaissance banker is back in vogue,” says Paul Taubman, chief executive officer of the investment bank PJT Partners Inc. “In a crisis, you need someone who can see the big picture.”