Lot's of people talk about how many hours banking involves and how much money people get paid in it.Can anyone give me some actual figures for how much analysts/associates get paid at some of the bulge bracket IB's like merrill lynch and what sort of hours to expect.I know it's not an IB forum but I couldn't find any where people regulalry contribute.

Go visit http://www.ibtalk.com/ where they'll be able to answer all your questions.The bankers at analyst level that I know typically work about 8am - 9pm most days, and at least one full day each weekend. There are stretches where they'll work 6am-midnight for a week, and a friend recently commented that he'd worked every day for 6 weeks without a day off. Which pretty much summarises why I chose to enter consultancy, not banking.

That hasn't been the experience of my friends who went into IB. They do work hard, but on the other hand they do get to go home most nights, unlike me. However, none of them started at an American bank.Those who are in trading get up with the milkman and the binman but finish relatively early. They never work weekends. They are however tied to their desks all day.Those who are in corporate finance, M&A etc work rather harder, including the odd midnight or 2am finish and afternoon over the weekend. Most of the time they are home by 9-9.30. I get the sense that they get off more lightly than some.Graduate pay on entry was about £35,000 at the time and has now edged up to £37,500-£39,000, I think. The bonus this year for first year analysts at a certain American bank (after they had been working 9 months or so) was something like £49,000 on top of this.

To clarify, my friend is an analyst at Lehman's.

To clarify, so are the analysts referred to above! My friends all started at European banks though.

No wonder my friend keeps complaining about his "lazy colleagues". Now I know who the guilty parties are! ;-)

I have a friend at UBS in Sales, just started on £50k + promise of roughly £50k bonus... That's over 3times my starting consulting pay :(