Hey Barry, thanks for making the time! Perhaps we should start with an introduction about yourself and what you’re up to these days?

OK, I’m at Rothschild & Co., which is a boutique investment bank, in the global advisory department, which is akin to investment banking. What we usually do is M&A advisory,  debt / equity advisory and restructuring, etc. As an asset-light investment bank, we are not involved in underwriting business, but more in the independent financial advisory business.

And this was what you were always aiming to do?

Not really, my grades were so terrible at university that it was probably out of the question to work in an investment bank!

Ah, I mean even before university! More like, what did you want to do when you were growing up? And maybe some colour on what sort of environment that was, like what your parents did for example.

My parents worked in corporate, though they had different hopes for me – my mum wanted me to be a lawyer, while my dad wanted me to be a doctor. But I didn’t want to be in either field. I wanted to explore the business or finance industry more, though I didn’t really have any thoughts on what sort of role I wanted to work on specifically, such as in banking or accounting…

OK, so when did you decide that you wanted to do banking or finance? Or rather, what pushed you towards this track?

I think it was when I was in secondary school or maybe high school. That was when I began to notice how significant finance was in Hong Kong’s economy. At the time, I didn’t have much interest in other professions, so business was a general path for me to take. So that’s when I decided to pursue this direction.

Ah ok, so secondary school years were quite formative then. So because of this, you chose…accounting and finance?

Well, at the time I found Accounting and Finance was a bit too plain for me. So I didn’t choose it. But then I saw the Economics and Finance programme…

Oops! Sorry about that…

…(laughs) and I actually took the DSE (Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education) and did pretty well in the Economics course for that (I got 5**!). So I felt that Economics wasn’t too bad, that I could do quite well in this course, so I decided to take Economics and Finance at Hong Kong University. (Laughs).

Oh, so that’s how you ruined your grades and future (laughs)

Yes (laughs). I never thought that Economics and Finance would be so hard. My grades were horrendous!

So did you ever think of working or studying abroad? Or were you always set on working in Hong Kong.

I did actually consider that. I applied to some schools via UCAS (the UK Universities and Colleges Admissions Service), but those were all backup choices really. That was just in case I couldn’t get into any good schools in Hong Kong. In the end, I got an offer from Hong Kong University, so I decided to go with that.

And your friends in Middle School? Were they all aiming to go into business?

So I went to Queen’s College, and our grades…varied. Those that did well, did really well. If they went abroad to study, they got into the Ivies, or else went to study medicine or something. For the rest of us, more middling students, we would probably be more inclined to study business related subjects at university.

So you were at HKU for how long…?

4 years.

Yeah, so for your 4 years at university, what drove you on the path to banking?

Well, when I first joined, I found Economics and Finance was well geared towards a career in finance. The courses I took were pretty relevant to the industry. The course materials, alumni, tutors, all seem to be geared towards this.

So I guess I positioned myself in a finance-related direction also. However, I didn’t really think more on this matter – like considering which banks to apply to, whether I should do a management trainee programme, what exams to take – I focused more on just getting through my 4 years at university.

So you mean to say, you did little to no career planning?

Yeah, I would say I did 0 planning (laughs).

OK then, so after you graduated, what did you get into…?

It’s actually quite funny. So I did my four years, but by my third year I had discovered that a poor GPA made it difficult to find a job. So by my third year, I started working harder to chase second upper honours.

I had to take a lot of unrelated courses to try to pull my GPA up and get to a second upper classification, because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t even be able to pass initial screening for potential graduate roles!

I actually decided to defer for one more semester to try to boost my chances. I didn’t get my grades up far enough though…

Wait what? So you did 4.5 years of university? Wouldn’t that impact your recruiting cycle?

Yes (laughs). I actually took more than the required number of credits to try to boost my GPA. And I actually wanted to shift my graduation specifically to sync up with a new recruiting cycle. I graduated in 2017 after the 1st semester of the academic year, as opposed to the summer of 2016. And indeed, that left me with maybe half a year to get some work experience.

So what did you do?

Ermm, I think I took on a part-time internship role, it was a Chinese asset management firm’s operations unit I think.

Wasn’t it hard to find internships for that period of time?

It wasn’t actually. It was part time, three days a week. As it wasn’t a summer internship, nor an industrial placement, there were actually fewer applicants. So it actually suited people like me.

Huh ok. So if you think back to your 4.5 years of university, was there anything else you would change? Outside of GPA of course.

Yeah, I probably wouldn’t have stayed in a hall (laughs).

But in all seriousness, I would have been a bit more aggressive in studies, and also in focussing on finding an internship since the start. I would have started trying to build up connections in year 1, networking via the societies and get to interact with alumni and professionals. Connections and networks are so crucial for starting a career in finance that outstanding / presentable candidates at networking events could get invited to superday / interviews. The people you meet in those events or schools may one day become your clients, business partners or working counterparts, and that would become your valuable asset throughout your career.

Well, I welcome you and everybody else to attend HKUBSAA events…anyhow, you successfully graduated and found an internship. How did you find your first job?

I got an offer in the first semester, and it was my only offer. It was quite a coincidence actually, a friend of mine had gotten into PwC’s deal advisory secondment programme, which was actually quite new. For this programme, participants are seconded to the audit department for about 1.5 years, and then you would be automatically moved into the deal advisory team to do M&A related projects.

Thanks for telling me about that when I was graduating.

I didn’t even know until later on! After joining, I was told there were plenty of good exit opportunities to investment banking / PEs or the inhouse corp development roles given the exposure and client names we would engage with. It’s really a place where people get to hone both their hard and soft skills.

Maybe. And I guess Hong Kong investment banks were more focussed on capital raising deals at the time, as opposed to M&A advisory?

Most banks do both but some are more focused in doing M&A like RothschildAnd the service is quite different between Big 4 firms and banks – there is more focus on, for example, financial due diligence for the big 4, whereas in IBD, you would get sight over the whole deal process.

So how was the secondment into audit?

I worked across 2-3 peaks in audit. The main purpose for this is to get the Certified Public Accountant designation, which I also managed to acquire. That’s because for deal advisory work, a lot of our day-to-day work is accounting related. For example, if we look at a company’s quality of earnings, there are many types of adjustments required, to ‘normalise’ the company’s EBITDA for forming valuation bases and measuring business performance. So my accounting foundations were built via this secondment.

So I did that for 1.5 years, then went to the deal team. This setup was mainly because the deal advisory team didn’t hire fresh graduates, only experienced hires. So the deal team was made of around 30-40 relatively senior people, while the audit team was closer to a few hundred. In general, there weren’t any juniors in the deal team, the lowest grade was probably senior associate level. And for projects, each individual project probably consisted of around 4-5 people.

So how long were you in the deal advisory position for?

Hmm around 2.5 years, maybe close to 3. Actually, I joined during covid, so there were few projects to go around. There was even mention of cuts to the deal team headcount at the time. So some people were shifted back to audit for a few months actually, up until the market began to come back in late 2020, 2021.

So how did you stand out in your time at the deal team? Or if not you, what did relatively outstanding colleagues do to stand out?

First off, you have to have solid technical knowledge. For example, when you need to analyse financial performance, you have to identify the suitable financial metrics and sort out the underlying drivers, in order for you to get the relevant information from the client to support your opinion. These guys will have very good business sense, and are able to give insightful advice about companies’ profitability when looking into company financials and operations, as well as deals in the market. With a good track record of project experiences, they have a good idea of, for example, what the normal profitability of a certain type of business would be in a particular stage of their development, and what solutions make sense for this business at that point in time, which is their value add to the client.

These are the sorts of guys that move quickly up the ranks – just like the friend who introduced me to the deal secondment programme – she was fast-tracked a few times and I am sure she will become a partner soon! She’s the same age as us!

So when did you leave PwC? And how did you find your next role?

I left in 2021, maybe the end of that year, as an SA3 (Senior Associate, Year 3), to join Rothschilds. I was headhunted into the role.The hiring market was pretty hot that year, due to perhaps pent up demand from covid. So the investment banks trawled through the Big 4 firms looking for experienced hires to come in as analysts.

So a new environment for you. How did you find it?

Yeah, it was a completely different type of role. Before, I was more focused on crunching numbers. In investment banking, I got the chance to participate in the complete transaction process, from client pitching, understanding what solutions to offer and tailor to the client, and in project execution and post deal integration. There was also lots of technical analysis and, more importantly, scope to drive the transaction, while maintaining a competitive process and making the deal happen.

So…how did you adapt? And again, how to excel?

I think…in investment banking, you have to be all-rounded, you have to be communicative and presentable and a real fast learner. For example, you need to have some legal knowledge and sense to review and comment on SPAs drafted by lawyers from a commercial perspective, and think of clause/ closing mechanism that protect client’s interest. During due diligence stage, you may work with market experts such as the MBB consulting firms to discuss and form a market view on a particular segment, and you even need to possess tax knowledge when discussing transaction structures and understand listing rule implications when dealing with the HKSE. So we need to deal with and absorb many different work streams and concepts.

For me, in the first few months, I had to spend a lot of time getting used to all these new things. It’s very difficult to keep asking questions, so I spent a lot of time googling and searching for answers. I think I worked until late night 2-3 am almost every day – this lasted for about half a year, before I started to get used to it.

After this process, I began to see the pattern for transactions, approaches, and procedures. It was only then that I knew what should happen across a transaction, who to speak to, how to prioritise workstreams, etc.

So you’ve been here for about 4 years now. What next?

Well, there are decent promotion opportunities in this firm so I may stay to see what happens in the future.

The next promotion will be vice president, and the role will be quite different, as it requires taking up more responsibilities, leading on projects, dealing with clients, and driving the deal process. So a lot more execution capabilities and soft skills for me to build and learn, which I look forward to.

So are you already preparing these soft skills?

It maybe time for me to attend more networking events and forums. For example, law firms tend to run these events each week, and invite PE firms to come and discuss the market. It could be the occassion where you find potential clients so it’s an opportunity to spread my net wide to try and capture these opportunities.

OK! Last question for our younger fellow alumni – if you could give some advice for people that are interested in this industry, what advice would you offer?

This really resonates with me, as we’re hiring interns and fresh graduates, and they always ask this question.

To be honest, nowadays it’s really difficult to get into this industry. The market is not that great and education inflation is pretty ridiculous. The people we’ve been interviewing tend to be masters students, and may have done their undergraduate at ivy league schools. Or they may even be MBA students! But this is the trend I guess. When I see all of these ambitious people, with so many degrees and maybe even 2-3 IBD internships, you would think that they would be home runs. But a lot of people don’t really have a very…solid business sense and logical thinking? Like situational questions or case studies, it seems like people really struggle with those from an analytical perspective, as people just haven’t built up that experience yet. So analytical skills are something I think candidates should hone, as that would really be something that makes one stand out.

A question I usually like to ask is: “if you were to build a start-up, what start-up would you do?”. Usually it’s a good way of gauging business sense, market understanding, and whether people have been looking into certain reports and how businesses are driven.

I think students generally may not look into these sorts of questions, so it’s a good starting point to prepare for the job. I think it’s good preparation, to look at company news, and, if one wants to focus on a particular sector, then look at sector reports, for example, to stay abreast of the trends and whatever is going on in that space.

If candidates can speak to market dynamics, how competitive companies are in their space, this would be pretty impressive. It really requires critical thinking with respect to market news or transactions, understanding the valuation behind it and whether it is high or low, and understanding the strategies and synergy of both the buyer and the seller. Knowing this, would be helpful from both an interview perspective and on the job. The technical stuff is really just the bare basics. Everyone knows them and everyone has a GPA above 4.0. So that’s the way to stand out.

Thanks for your time!

Barry Siu is currently with Rothschild & Co. as an investment banking associate in Hong Kong. He may be reached on Linkedin here.