Citi’s ex-head of UK M&A says enjoy the moment, but only when you’re at the top
Most people have the misery of never enjoying their job. Some people have the privilege of enjoying it from the start. But if you listen to Citi’s former UK banking chief, it takes about nine years for your job to become rewarding.
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Jan Skarbek spent more than 20 years at Citi in London. He joined the firm as a director in M&A after it acquired Schroders; he was made named head of UK & Ireland investment banking in 2011, a position he held for over a decade. Currently, Skarbek is a partner at London-based boutique Europa Partners.
Speaking to Lazo Cetnik of Pretraga Partners on the Merger Talks Podcast, Skarbek ruminated on his nearly three decades in investment banking. There are stages to an investment banking career, Skarbek explained. The first is learning; the second is specifying and directing others; the third is using your knowledge of both.
“In your early career, you have a fantastic training ground in both numbers and words. In investment banking, differently to other careers, it's more important to be capable and competent around numbers and modelling first,” Skarbek said. But having an analytical mind is table stakes, and the best bankers are distinguished by their ability to express themselves.
Skarbek called banking “a sort of apprenticeship” with “rapid and non-defined-by-time progress”. And learning how to use “the words” to describe what you’ve learned is what takes a young banker to stage three of their career. Which words are those? Skarbek didn't say, but we have a potential list here.
Once you've learned the words, you'll start having fun. Or so says Skarbek.
“When you have a little bit of experience, you find yourself sat in meetings or on Zoom calls,” Skarbek says. “You're in situations where the discussions that are being had and the decisions that are being made are a privilege to be part of.”
If you're an M&A banker like Skarbek, those decisions will concern M&A activity. “Debating the blend of whether a price is sufficient and the buyer is a good enough home and balancing those factors, deciding which points to push and which points to leave… When you take a step back, you'd pay good money to be in that discussion.”
While you're enjoying yourself, Skarbek said you'll also need to keep an eye on your self-worth. Being in a position of influence “can be an ego thing, but it doesn’t need to be.”
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