Top 10 Best Nig. Investment Banks In This Meltdown Period?

U wan rub on me this morning. U cited the Scans welfare system which I benefit from, as I model of a state. U should also know that they're very liberal here- open gays and lesbians. So u catch my me now,

There are people but the sincerity of purpose has always been an issue.
Lets hope the likes of Saga will come on board my govt in 2018

Pally, u don win

been a while, good to see things are still happenin over here, had to get me nysc clearance done,

neways, heard ogun state has a bond issue coming out pretty soon, sure they wanna model lagos and akwa ibom (i tink) financing infrastucture with debt instruments,  seen that first hand, was part of a team that went to pitch a proposal for their international/cargo airport, seen a bit of commitment on thier part but its pretty hard for PPP to thrive because from wat i saw there was a political undertone, fiscal instability is a threat to any PPP especially for a project with a payback period of about 20years, as in this case, but i hope it works for them, and for us in naija, we need a well balanced socio-capitalist mix wit each bloc checkin and balancin as they see fit, dunno d intricacies of political economics tho, 

I am even struggling of what the thread should be titled as. 

Me too o. It started with ranking of Nigeria's IBs, then IB general market outlook, later info on getting job in IBs, later oil companies, later capitalism/welfarism argument and still counting. 

Maybe the title should have been something like RANDOM DISCUSSION ON INVESTMENT BANKING AND NIGERIAN FINANCIAL TERRAIN.

Noted. I have not forgotten. Just quite busy.

See my response 2moro by God's grace. Replying 4rm fone, so constrained 2 type much. U no say me i b talkative or is it writeative, lol. Gudnyt

i have done a lotta deals in my present coy and they are huge
the big banks in Nigeria and others were our heavily paying clients for some time

my mandates span the finance/manufacturing, real estate to the oil and gas but i dont think i can mention the details of the deals

i don sign some non-disclosure agreement  

@Genius Jarus
Howdy, still waiting to recieve in your response.


@seun
Yep,i want to agree with u on the ETERNA OIL deal, i used to be a curious investor way back in the Uni those days about the low share price of the coy,as it always closes at ridiculously low price compared to other O&G coys quoted at d end of each trading day and since i have followed the devt in the coy,so the restructuring by Meristem was quite somthg, considering the swelling market value of the coy pre-meltdown time.Hopefully,stuffs already put into place during the restructuring shd blossom and take more definite shape when this whole fin. mess start clearing off,hence leading to the visible and stronger ENTERNA OIL brand-share price wise and goodwill-wise.

As regards the SAVANNAH BANK restructuring thing,good to know somthg like that is in the pipeline,but can u shed more light on it, dont really know much about it for now,except i research it.


@tkb
As regards other mamoth deals that u ve dug your teeth into or that have come to your notice in the course of your work,we can at least know the names of the coys involved in the transac, i can tell u authoritatively from a legal point of view that u will not be contravening any provision of any non-disclosure doc u might have signed with ya employers,by mentioning parties to a deal.These CF deals info,most times, are within the purview of public domain and info on them can always be gotten from several sources.
Bros,lets share from the fountain of your practical experience and exposure,nothing do you o!-LOL

@others
it's as if others are just playing observers,common on,puvguy,babalawo,sagamite,worldz, et al, we can do berra now.

i wish to contribute to this topic but am a  newbie, got nothing to say, i am really feeling this thread,

thanks to all that have contributed in a positive way.

Yeap, I have my academic degree in Economics and that is my primary field and that is where I think I can do best, but you know, boys need enough dough at this early stage, so boys will not hesitate to join any company that offers the highest reward with minimal stress, and that is what oil coys are. I have become an accountant overnight(forced to write ICAN) and put aside my Economics certificate/knowledge aside, but by the grace of god, I still have great and conscious plan to go back to my primary field, but not investment banking really. CBN is where I'm actually eyeing but I'm too young to join a government establishment now. Boys need money, so still playing around within oil & gas sector

Ajanlekoko's theory says it almost all: http://www.nairaland.com/nigeria?topic=261802.msg3996382#msg3996382

I'm still on general track, but consciously planning to go back to personal track.

Different IBs have different test formats, just as different banks also have different formats. I don't know much about their tests.

For Vetiva, it's 55 questions plus an essay, the title of which I will not say here, but I'll advise you don't waste much time on the essay. The time is 90 minutes and it's a mixture of English and Maths, mostly word problems. There is 'sentence correction' aspect, and of course 'nearest in meaning' and 'opposite in meaning' sections. The passmark is 60%. They are more related to foreign GMAT than this locally made GMAT book most job seekers carry around.

For IBTC, if they've not changed it, it's 60 questions, 90 minutes and that was the cheapest test I have ever done. The passmark is 50% and I wonder why people fail this test. I won't state my score here to avoid being called pompous again here but it was quite high. It's a mixture of English and maths, but most of the Maths are business maths - simple, compound interests etc. English also contains 'nearest in meaning', 'opposite in meaning',  etc.  No shapes and figures. No graphical interpretations.

I don't know anything on the test formats for other IBs.

Package? First, it differs markedly across different organizations. Second, I learnt from a friend in one of them yesterday, that they implemented pay cut when the crisis hit them. So I may not be able to help. But for those that are wholely owned subsidiary of banks, their pay is usually the same as what entry level earns in their parent bank. For those that are strictly IBs, it depends on the size and the success: The big ones(most mentioned earlier in this thread) pay between 160-200K per month as take-home, while the small, not too successful ones pay between 80-120K net per month. It differs markedly.

DISCLAIMER: Anything mentioned here about a company does not represent the official position of the company, just as any organization or figure quoted here, and in my other posts, should not be taken as accurate. The goal here is to contribute our little quota to solving unemployment problem in Nigeria, and demystify the widespread pessimistic mentality and demonization of the job market in Nigeria. Lack of information about the job market, as opposed to lack of requisite skills, is the bane of many job seekers in Nigeria.


MOBIL:
Mobil is one of the highest paying companies in Nigeria.
RECRUITMENT PROCESS: They also don't recruit anytime, but usually once in a year. Bear in mind that we are talkng about Finance jobs here. They place advert in papers and shortlist a lot of people(unlike Shell) running into thousands but at the end of the process may not take more than 100. They organize tests in batches, taking 3-4 days at times. Their test is usually divided into three parts:Verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning and abstract reasoning.
Under verbal reasoning, you will be given a number of short passages to read within limited time and questions will follow each passage. The question takes the form of a statement which you will be asked to say whether it's TRUE, FALSE or CANNOT SAY. The idea is to test your understanding of the passage.
Under quantitative, you will be given a chunk of graphs and tables with headings, and you will be asked to answer questions based on your interpretation of the graphs and tables.
Under abstract, you will be given figures and shapes and asked to complete blank spaces, where you will need to identify the realtionship between the figures and shapes.
You have to be super fast. Few people usually scale through test stage in Mobil.
The common Nigerian GMAT could be useful here. There is one special section in that GMAT that exactly covers these areas.

If you are lucky to scale through the test stage, then interview will follow. Their interview is also like Shell's, though not structured like Shell's.
It's not the regular interview of 'tell me about yourself', 'why do you want to work with us?' ,' where do you want to see yourself in the next three years?' etc.
It requires conscious preparation, because if you don't have ready made answers for most of the questions, you may be caught napping and unless you are a very fast  thinker, you will find yourself embarrassingly uttering incoherent answers, like one of my friends that fluffed the interview used to make jest of herself.
The interview is quite thorough and you will be asked to describe a scenario in the past where you had to work as a team, where you were faced with the challenge of having to compromise, where you disagree with your team members, other challenges you have faced in your life. And the challenge here is not ' . . . . ehn, when my grandmother died. . so I was living alone. . .so I didn't have any food to eat'. They require real life problem-solving challenge, working with other people, resource constraint, challenge of having to work with a difficult team leader/member etc. It will be quite theatrical and you will be drilled. If you have any, probably when you were in school and you were president or exco or member of a club/association etc, it is advisable you refresh your experience so as to be confident, coherent and take charge of the interview.

PACKAGE:Their pay package is in the region of 6M per annum for entry level. Free lunch, good working environment etc.

CONTRACT JOB Mobil takes a lot of people on contract, but the above described process is for regular, permanent offer. For contract offer, it's not as strict and thorough as decribed above and pay far less, of course. The chance of having a contract offer converted to permanent one tends towards zero, but your contract may be renewed again and again.




OANDO:
Oando is great company by all standards, ably run by the wonder kid of corporate Nigeria, Wale Tinubu. An indigenous company giving almost century-old multinationals a run for their money, and foraging into areas nobody imagined a home-grown O&G player could dare. A company with a great future, if you ask me.

RECRUITMENT PROCESS: Entry level in Oando used to be handled by the company's HR dept, but it has now been outsourced to an external consulting firm, Brass consulting, effective last year. So all the entry level recruitment is now being handled by Brass. They have a programme called Graduate Trainee Programme(GTP) which was just started. Here, Brass, on behalf of it's client,through advert in papers, invites applications from sutably qualified candidates. But beyond that I don't have any idea about the other stages, but of course, the shortlisted candidates will write test, and face series of interviews etc. At the end of the exercise, the successful candidates will join the company. They will be subject to one year on-the-job training and will move across various entities and departments and they will be assessed after one year.

PACKAGE: Competitive. Good working environment. 

I have been following this thread with great interest.I think you guys are doing a good job in demysifying the terrain.I have some question though;

What kind of training programmes can someone at entry level expect from an investment bank in Nigeria and do these firms organise training courses for their staff away from the office ?

Apart from salary,are their any other criteria that seperates one investment firm from another which a potential employee should consider?

Thanks.

@Genius Jarus
U have not for a day disappointed the confidence i reppose in you and am sure am saying the minds of several pple.
Good reply there.
Jarus,i'd love to tell u something here-never be distracted by comments.Apply OBJ's model(never reply critics).I dnt know when u were at Ife, whether u had the oppurtunity to lead people,at political/faculty/deptal levels.Pple will always throw careless comments around.My 5yrs at U.I were spent being a president of XYZ association or the other,develop a thick skin and like a friend of mine that finished from Ife will say-'i wont grant them the luxury of a reply or joining issues'
-Books apart,you re a a smart and well versed person,a mspecial rear breed on NL. pls keep up the good works here.
-Are u qualified,i mean ICAN.
-I need to give u some hints,send your IM addy to me or berra still,join me to your yahoo IM

---

 peace.

No problems, server. I will delete my earlier comment after our discussion 'off-camera'.

Thanks. I don't know whether it's the same for Engineers & Finance recruits. But I know it's not less than 6M for finance recruit and could be as high as 8M.
Also note my earlier caveat that any figure quoted here may not be accurate, as people prefer to give range, rather than being exact, when it comes to disclosing earnings.

Thanks for your complementary remarks. Being an Econs grad, you know I will have to pass thru 5 stages in ICAN, and I never had initial plan to be an Accountant, so I started quite late, but I'm now 2 steps away from qualifying, and already with a number of prizes at previous stages. In any case, I don't have any plans to establish a long-term career as an Accountant. But the certificate and the practical experience I'm gaining now is surely going to be an added value when I return to my primary field of interest.
And one last thing, do me the favour of dropping that prefix/title you gave me. I'm far from being a genuis, a struggler at best.