Bulge Brackets
- 01:23
Understand what is meant by the term Buldge Bracket within investment banking
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Within banking, you might hear people refer to bulge brackets. So what does this mean? Well, this is the group of banks that comprises the world's largest multinational investment banks. The term bulge bracket describes the investment banks in an underwriting certificate that issues the largest number of securities on a new issue. So it's a prestigious term. There's no universally accepted or recognized criteria, but everyone would accept that Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and JP Morgan fall into this category, with a number of other investment banks. If you think about Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, these were traditionally broker dealers, what you might call pure play investment banks. So many people find that Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are more focused on IB, however, in reality, many banks could be considered to be universal banks. JPM is probably one of the most prominent universal banks and certainly also an investment bank and part of the bulge bracket club. In terms of which bank to work for and in which team, probably the best thing to do is to have a look at the league tables for each bank. You can see that different banks focus on different industries. So for example, equity capital markets in Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are very, very much focused on tech, whereas JP Morgan is very much focused on real estate.