Pros
- Responsibility: From day one, you are placed with a great deal of responsibility, more so than most first year analysts at other banks - Deal flow: Deals are always coming in, and you never have to worry about getting staffed on just pitches - Exposure to senior bankers: Coming in, I did not expect to work as closely with senior bankers as I have. Most of these guys come from pretty large banks with tons of experience. As an analyst, it's a unique opportunity to work with them every single day. - Modeling skills: At FT, you learn how to model early on, and are expected to understand the model inside and out on your respective deal. Models are also always built from scratch. You aren't just building powerpoint decks as a first year, you are learning the necessary analytical skills to help you strive in your career. - Culture: The majority of FT bankers genuinely want to see everyone succeed, and try to help out the junior staff as much as possible. - Improving work life balance: Over the past 6 months or so, management has made a concentrated effort to improve the balance of analysts. By hiring more people, the workload and hours expected of an analyst has significantly gone down.
Cons
- Time zone differences: As an analyst in the US, there is a possibility you are staffed on cross border deals. While this is really exciting to work on deals across the world, this means that sometimes you will have meetings early in the morning to accommodate the different time zones.