Large, global investment banks typically have several business units, including Investment Banking, concerned with advising public and private corporations; Research, concerned with producing reports on valuations of financial products; and Sales and Trading, concerned with buying and selling products.

An investment bank is split into the so-called Front Office, Middle Office and Back Office, with Front Office widely deemed as having the highest-caliber employees in terms of intellectual and/or interpersonal capital, and Back Office the least

Investment Banking is the traditional aspect of investment banks which involves helping customers raise funds in the Capital Markets and advising on M&As and Corporate Finance. Investment bankers prepare idea pitches that they bring to meetings with their clients, with the expectation that their effort will be rewarded with a mandate when the client is ready to undertake a transaction.

Financial Markets is split into four key divisions: Sales, Trading, Research and Structuring.

– Sales and Trading is often the most profitable area of an investment bank, responsible for the majority of revenue of most investment banks. Sales is the term for the investment banks sales force, whose primary job is to call on institutional and high-net-worth investors to suggest trading ideas (on caveat emptor basis) and take orders. Sales desks then communicate their clients’ orders to the appropriate trading desks, which can price and execute trades, or structure new products.

– Research is the division which reviews companies and writes reports about their prospects, often with «buy» or «sell» ratings. While the research division generates no revenue, its resources are used to assist traders in trading, the sales force in suggesting ideas to customers, and investment bankers by covering their clients. In recent years the relationship between investment banking and research has become highly regulated, reducing its importance to the investment bank.

– Structuring has been a recent division as Derivatives have come into play, with highly technical employees working on creating complex structured products, which typically offer greater margins and returns than underlying securities.

Risk Management involves analyzing the risk that traders are taking onto the balance sheet in conducting their daily trades, and setting limits on the amount of capital that they are able to trade in order to prevent ‘bad’ trades having a detrimental effect to a desk overall.

Operations involve data-checking trades that have been conducted, ensuring that they are not erroneous, and transacting the required transfers.

Technology – Every major investment bank has considerable amounts of in-house software, created by the Technology team, who are also responsible for IT support.