The Dealmakers: What Investment Bankers Actually Do

On November 3, 2025, two American companies you have probably never thought about together signed an agreement worth 48.7 billion dollars. Kimberly-Clark, the Texas maker of Huggies and Kleenex, agreed to buy Kenvue, the New Jersey company behind Tylenol, Band-Aid, Neutrogena and Listerine. Behind every clause in that agreement, every share price negotiated, and every financing arrangement that made the cash part of the payment possible, sat a group of bankers most students have never heard of.

On Kimberly-Clark's side: PJT Partners and J.P. Morgan. On Kenvue's side: Centerview Partners and Goldman Sachs. Four firms. Hundreds of bankers. Months of work. This is the world of investment banking.

The Three Things They Actually Do

Investment banks are not like the banks where your parents have savings accounts. They do not take deposits from the public. Instead, they work as intermediaries between companies that need money and investors who have it. Their work falls into three main buckets.

The first is mergers and acquisitions advisory, often called M&A. When one company wants to buy another, investment bankers build the financial models, negotiate the price, and structure the deal. In 2025 alone, global M&A volumes reached roughly 4.5 trillion dollars, with 68 separate deals each worth more than 10 billion dollars.

The second is capital raising. When a private company wants to sell shares to the public for the first time, an initial public offering, bankers run the entire process. They value the company, write the prospectus, pitch the stock to investors across cities, and set the final share price on listing day.

The third is financing and debt advisory. When governments build infrastructure or corporations need billions for an acquisition, investment banks arrange the loans and structure the bonds.

The Core Weave Story

In March 2025, a company called CoreWeave prepared to go public. Founded in 2017 as a crypto mining operation called Atlantic Crypto, it had pivoted to specialised cloud computing for artificial intelligence. Its clients included Microsoft, Meta, Nvidia, and OpenAI.

Three investment banks led its IPO: Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, and Goldman Sachs. These firms decided the pricing, ran the roadshow where CoreWeave's executives met investors across continents, and managed the share sale on March 27, 2025. CoreWeave priced its IPO at 40 dollars per share, below its original target of 47 to 55 dollars, because the bankers judged investor appetite carefully. The company sold 37.5 million shares and raised 1.5 billion dollars at a valuation of roughly 23 billion dollars.

The stock began trading on Nasdaq under the ticker CRWV on March 28, 2025. That single day was the payoff for months of work by hundreds of bankers across three firms.

The Indian Connection

Mumbai is the hub of investment banking in India. Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Citi, and Indian firms like Kotak Investment Banking, Axis Capital, and ICICI Securities run large teams in the city. They advise on Indian IPOs, domestic M&A, and cross-border deals.

According to salary data aggregated on Ambition Box in early 2025, investment banking analysts at Goldman Sachs in Mumbai with zero to four years of experience earn between 11.2 lakh and 35.7 lakh rupees per year. J.P. Morgan pays a median of around 18 lakh rupees for similar roles. Senior Vice Presidents at global banks routinely cross 60 lakh to over 1 crore annually including bonuses. The upside is significant. The hours are brutal. 80 to 100 hour weeks are common for analysts during live deals.

Why This Career Is Growing Again

After three slow years, 2025 was the comeback year for dealmaking. Goldman Sachs advised on transactions worth around 432 billion dollars in the first nine months of 2025. J.P. Morgan was close behind at 427 billion dollars. Morgan Stanley reported a 47 percent surge in investment banking revenue in the fourth quarter of 2025 alone.

The reasons are structural. Artificial intelligence is driving megadeals as giants like Microsoft, Nvidia, and BlackRock pour capital into data centres. The 40 billion dollar acquisition of Aligned Data Centers in October 2025, backed by a consortium including Microsoft, Nvidia, and xAI, was the largest data centre deal ever recorded. Electronic Arts agreed to a 55 billion dollar sale to a consortium led by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund and Silver Lake. Abbott announced a 23 billion dollar acquisition of Exact Sciences in November 2025.

For every deal of this size, a team of analysts, associates, VPs, and managing directors spent weeks building financial models, running valuations, negotiating terms, and coordinating with lawyers and regulators. The analysts are often 22 to 25 years old, with undergraduate degrees in commerce, engineering, or economics, and an unusual tolerance for spreadsheets at 3 am.

How Futurowise Can Help

At Futurowise, our Foundations of Finance and Investing programme introduces students to exactly the world described above. Over four weeks, they explore the role of investment bankers, learn to read financial statements, understand how businesses are valued, and design a virtual investment portfolio of their own. It is the same analytical muscle that every banker at Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, or Kotak relies on daily. Our Public Speaking programme complements this by ensuring students can pitch ideas in high-stakes rooms and communicate with the clarity that sets top bankers apart. The students who understand how global dealmaking works today will be the ones shaping the deals of tomorrow.

Explore our programmes: www.futurowise.com/courses