Читать книгу Investment Banking For Dummies - Matthew Krantz - Страница 35

IN THIS CHAPTER

Getting a high-level grasp of the role investment banks play in the capital markets

Finding out what job investment banks play in mergers and acquisitions

Seeing how investment banks deal with leveraged buyouts

Coming to terms with the importance of investment research

Getting an understanding of private business sales, trading, and initial public offerings

Seeing why investment bankers pay so much attention to valuation of assets

Investment banking is the grease that oils the capitalistic machine. Businesses, entrepreneurs, governments, schools, and other institutions that hope to build and expand need cash to make it happen. But in the financial version of the chicken-and-the-egg dilemma, sometimes the people with the great plans don’t have the cash to get started.

And that’s exactly where investment bankers come in. Investment bankers find ways to put together investors with money, who would like a return on that money, with the people building projects.

Investment bankers play an interesting role in that they’re usually just the money people. The officials from the city or government are in charge of the project, be it building a bridge or building a power plant. But investment bankers are the critical financial players that make sure the project is adequately funded, but at the same time, generates adequate returns to make the investors happy.

This chapter isn’t designed to get into the nitty-gritty yet. The gory details of what investment bankers do comes in later chapters in this book. This chapter is more of a bird’s-eye view that shows you some of the ways investment bankers get involved in key financial transactions. You’ll read examples where investment banking plays a big role in making things happen with companies and investors. Perhaps one of the most high-profile ways investment bankers are seen in modern finance is in mergers and acquisitions (M&A), transactions where big companies decide to buy a rival or another company with advantages it would like to have. You also find out about leveraged buyouts (LBOs), which are unique transactions where buyers use large amounts of borrowed money to buy a company. Another primary driver of investment banking activity are initial public offerings (IPOs), where companies raise money by selling pieces of ownership to the public for the first time. Tying many aspects of investment banking together are the disciplines of research and valuation. Lastly, in this chapter, you get a sense of the importance of trading at many investment banking units, and appreciate the risks and potential rewards.