Skip to main content

Industry Insights: Jake King-Smith, Goldman Sachs - Careers in Investment Banking

The first Industry Insight event of this year was presented by Jake King-Smith and organised by the ICMA Centre in partnership with the University of Reading Finance Society. During the talk, Mr. Smith took us through his career from Merrill Lynch to Goldman Sachs, as well as giving us advice to secure a position in Investment Banking.

View all events
GS 1

Mr. Jake King-Smith is an alumnus of the ICMA Centre, having done his undergraduate studies in International Securities at the University of Reading. He managed to secure a summer internship in the Sales & Trading division at BNP Paribas and turned this internship into a permanent role. After graduating from university in 2010, he joined the Corporate Rates Sales team at BNP Paribas and built his career for the next eight years. After developing an expertise in that field, he joined Goldman Sachs in September 2018 as Executive Director.

During the talk, Jake alongside explaining the different departments of an Investment Bank, discussed about their relationship within the bank. For example, Debt Capital Market, where Mr. Smith is involved, is working closely with the M&A department on project especially on debt advisory using a wide range of financial instruments that include interest swaps, equities, FX and derivatives.

Mr. Smith also shared some useful tips on how to stand out in his application and be successful in the financial sector. He highlighted the importance of insight days and internship opportunities because it can lead to graduate scheme offers which was the case for him at BNP Paribas. Another recommendation was the importance of building connections in the sector you want to develop your career in by using tools such as LinkedIn or by attending events like the ICMA Insight talks that he found really inspiring at the time he was an ICMA student.

During the Q&A session, Jake answered several questions from the attendance. Some of these questions asked about what skills or experience he was personally looking for during an interview, the difference in today’s trading compared to 10 years ago and what position a student without experience in Investment Banking, should consider to start their career.

Mr. Smith stressed the fact that it is really important to stay updated on financial news and to make sure to understand it. Also, he suggested that it is by trying a role that you might find the place that fits you best in Investment Banking, there is no wrong way of entering Finance.

The ICMA Centre and the UoR Finance Society thank Mr. Smith for attending University of Reading to deliver an insightful talk!

Laurent Archaud

GS 6

Next Steps

View all events
Published 17 October 2019
Topics:
Industry Insights reviews

You might also like

Top of the class for the ICMA Centre

23 November 2006
The ICMA Centre, University of Reading is set to have one of the largest Reuters equipped facilities in the world outside investment banks by 2008.

Economist Full-time MBA ranking 2014

13 October 2014
Last week's results place Henley Business School at 34th in the world, 8th in Europe and 2nd in the UK. This demonstrates a consistent and strong improvement over the last three years and sees Henley ranked as one of only three British Business Schools in the world’s top 40.
Rankings news

The Future of the Repo Market: an International Conference

29 April 2013
Senior Visiting Fellow at the ICMA Centre, Richard Comotto, will be speaking at the upcoming conference organised by the ICMA European Repo Council, titled "A collateralised future - what really happened in the repo market during the crisis and how will it cope with growing collateral demand, stagnant supply and regulatory uncertainty?". Richard Comotto will be a panellist in a workshop session titled: Is repo an unstable source of funding? The issues of procyclicality of leverage, interconnectedness, asset encumbrance, collateral re-use and fire sales.