Investment banking is a special segment of banking operation that helps individuals or organisations raise capital and provide financial consultancy services to them.
They act as intermediaries between security issuers and investors and help new firms to go public. They either buy all the available shares at a price estimated by their experts and resell them to public or sell shares on behalf of the issuer and take commission on each share.
Description: Investment banking is among the most complex financial mechanisms in the world. They serve many different purposes and business entities. They provide various types of financial services, such as proprietary trading or trading securities for their own accounts, mergers and acquisitions advisory which involves helping organisations in M&As,; leveraged finance that involves lending money to firms to purchase assets and settle acquisitions, restructuring that involves improving structures of companies to make a business more efficient and help it make maximum profit, and new issues or IPOs, where these banks help new firms go public.
Let’s understand how an investment bank earns money by providing acquisition advisories.
Think of company ABC buying another company XYZ. ABC is not sure how much company XYZ is really worth and what will be the long-term benefits in terms of revenues, costs, etc. In this scenario, the investment bank will go through the process of due diligence to determine the value of the company, settle the deal by helping ABC prepare necessary documents and advising it on the appropriate timing of the deal.
Here the investment bank works on the buy side and some other investment banks may be working on the sell side to help XYZ. The bigger the deal size, the more commission the bank will earn.
Bank of America, Barclays Capital, Citigroup Investment Banking, Deutsche Bank, and JP Morgan are some of the largest investment banks in India.
