Investment Banking Associate, Services & Industrials

Solutions for Today’s Challenges. Vision for Tomorrow’s Opportunities. Join William Blair, the Premier Global Partnership. William Blair has delivered trusted advice for nine decades, and we continue to deepen our expertise and relationships across regions, asset classes, and markets throughout North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. We are committed to our people and culture, values, clients, and local communities. What sets us apart is that we are an independent partnership, with employees who have unique experiences, perspectives, and backgrounds. We provide advisory services, strategies, and solutions to meet clients’ evolving needs amid dynamic market conditions and varying industries.

We strive to attract the most qualified, passionate candidates who specialize in investment banking, investment management, private wealth management, and a variety of other business functions. We work tirelessly to create an inclusive culture and take pride in fostering employees’ professional and personal growth. We empower our people to bring their best thinking each day so we can deliver the tailored, thoughtful work and problem-solving abilities that our clients expect. Equally, we are proud of our long-term partnerships with the communities in which we live and work, a legacy we inherited from our founder.

Job Description: Execute in-depth analyses to support new business development, transaction execution and the delivery of investment banking products and services to clients and prospects. Perform extensive research and financial modeling, apply valuation methods, and complete due diligence activities. Work closely with client staff to advance projects, gathering necessary information, conveying complex financial modeling outcomes and presenting analysis results. Provide training and mentorship to less experienced staff.

Responsibilities include but may not be limited to:

• Perform extensive financial/valuation analyses to value debt and equity for mergers, acquisitions and capital raising transactions.
• Utilize creative approaches to analyses that illustrate key concepts/messages.
• Carefully review and provide guidance to Analysts’ work.
• Build advanced financial models to value potential and actual clients and/or industries, leveraging broad understanding of valuation and broad finance/accounting topics.
• Demonstrate thorough knowledge of multiple client sectors.
• Assimilate information to perform insightful analyses.
• Lead due diligence, research, analysis and documentation of potential and live transactions.
• Anticipate potential deal issues and pass concerns through to team members in real time.
• Actively participate in presentation development and hypothesis testing to highlight financial analysis and research results.
• Develop, produce and deliver proposals and presentations to clients and prospects, which exhibit broad knowledge of IB product solutions and underlying components.
• Engage, with analysts, in the development of marketing materials that highlight the competitive advantage of William Blair.
• Actively participate in client meetings and drafting sessions.
• Research and expand expertise of industries and/or sectors.
• Leverage knowledge to target certain clients or industries.
• Monitor key industry drivers.
• Offer insights into business trends in sector to facilitate processes.
• Evaluate and improve BIC content.
• Identify improvements to processes and propose solutions to complete tasks more efficiently.
• Take ownership of client relationships.
• Foster effective dialogue with finance and accounting staffs to facilitate processes.
• Anticipate needs and challenges and provide seamless solutions.
• Demonstrate an understanding of macro factors related to client industry, investment banking products and potential implications.
• Act as “on the job” trainer for analysts, providing constructive feedback.
• Focus on improving the quality of analyst and summer intern work product.
• Ensure senior team knows the valuable contributions of all team members.
• Ensure all activities are in compliance with applicable rules, regulations, policies and procedures.
• Additional responsibilities as requested.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s Degree required
• MBA strongly preferred
• Detail oriented with strong analytical abilities
• Excellent mathematical, writing, verbal and computer skills
• Ability to adapt to new tasks with little notice
• Ability to manage expectations of senior bankers while working on multiple projects simultaneously
• Effective leadership and coaching skills
• Strong desire to win
• Sound judgement
• Deep, sophisticated understanding of accounting and finance
• Commitment to satisfying internal and external customers
• Travel required: approximately 10% to 30%
• Internship or prior work experience in financial services industry preferred