What degree is best for investment banking?
Emolument.com has analysed 706 salary and bonus entries from London-based bankers
Overwhelmingly, Business & Finance: as expected most bankers choose business or finance-related degree such as Accounting or Economics, which shows an interest in the financial sector right from their late teens, when they picked their university course; thereby making most of them.
However scarcity is highly prized: While they may represent 34% of the banking population, Business graduates are not the best paid ? far from it; Mathematics & Statistics grads at Director level earn on average close to 400, 000 vs. 265, 000 for those with a Business Accounting & Finance degree, reflecting the difficulty of learning these highly technical skills on the job, and how effective they are at structuring deals or trading in an environment using increasingly complex financial products.
How about the arts? Surprisingly, banks even hire prospective bankers with arts degrees: HSBC leads the way with as much as 15% of its front office staff sourced from Arts and Humanities subjects; these bankers usually attended the most prestigious universities such as Oxford or Cambridge and are popular despite their lack of technical abilities.
Best paying subjects - London Banking Directors
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