Brian DeChesare

New York

Founder of Mergers & Inquisitions and Breaking Into Wall Street and fan of whiskey, weightlifting, and wandering. Extensive experience defeating Sauron.

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Get the Latest Version

2 months ago | mergersandinquisitions.com | Brian DeChesare

If you're new here, please click here to get my FREE 57-page investment banking recruiting guide - plus, get weekly updates so that you can break into investment banking. Thanks for visiting!Yes, you read that headline correctly: We have released a new version of the infamous 400 Questions Investment Banking guide.
Top Firms, Deals, Careers

Mar 19, 2025 | mergersandinquisitions.com | Brian DeChesare

If you're new here, please click here to get my FREE 57-page investment banking recruiting guide - plus, get weekly updates so that you can break into investment banking. Thanks for visiting!Consumer retail private equity is so diverse that it almost seems like a paradox. Depending on the firm, a “consumer retail private equity deal” might consist of:A leveraged buyout of a struggling offline retailer. A “growth buyout” of a fast-growing restaurant chain.
Top Firms, Careers, and Trades

Mar 5, 2025 | mergersandinquisitions.com | Brian DeChesare

If you're new here, please click here to get my FREE 57-page investment banking recruiting guide - plus, get weekly updates so that you can break into investment banking. Thanks for visiting! If you had to pick a single industry that could be interesting to every hedge fund investing in individual companies, it might be biotech. Of course, “biotech” is not an official hedge fund strategy.
Venture Capital Internships: The Full Guide

Feb 19, 2025 | mergersandinquisitions.com | Brian DeChesare

If you're new here, please click here to get my FREE 57-page investment banking recruiting guide - plus, get weekly updates so that you can break into investment banking. Thanks for visiting!With investment banking internship recruiting starting earlier and earlier, you also need to win “pre-banking internships” earlier.
Equity Research vs. Investment Banking: Full Comparison

Jan 22, 2025 | mergersandinquisitions.com | Brian DeChesare

If you're new here, please click here to get my FREE 57-page investment banking recruiting guide - plus, get weekly updates so that you can break into investment banking. Thanks for visiting! We sometimes get questions about why we don’t offer an “equity research course.” People are convinced that financial modeling in equity research is vastly different from investment banking and that research requires different or more specialized skills.
My Top Lessons Over 20 Years

Jan 8, 2025 | mergersandinquisitions.com | Brian DeChesare

If you're new here, please click here to get my FREE 57-page investment banking recruiting guide - plus, get weekly updates so that you can break into investment banking. Thanks for visiting! I’ve said before that nothing on this site is meant to be “investment advice.” That said, my annual investment/market updates always get a lot of traffic, so I thought it might be interesting to follow up on this year’s update with more of an advice article.
Full Set + Answers

Nov 20, 2024 | mergersandinquisitions.com | Brian DeChesare

If you're new here, please click here to get my FREE 57-page investment banking recruiting guide - plus, get weekly updates so that you can break into investment banking. Thanks for visiting!This site has already covered investment banking interview questions, private equity interview questions, and venture capital interview questions, so the next topic on the list seemed to be growth equity interview questions.
Full Review and Impact

Nov 6, 2024 | mergersandinquisitions.com | Brian DeChesare

If you're new here, please click here to get my FREE 57-page investment banking recruiting guide - plus, get weekly updates so that you can break into investment banking. Thanks for visiting!I was barely paying attention to this year’s election cycle for a long time. But in late June, something interesting finally happened: Biden debated Trump, and his brain exploded and got sucked into a black hole on stage.
Full Guide, Salaries, Exits + More

Oct 30, 2024 | mergersandinquisitions.com | Brian DeChesare

If you're new here, please click here to get my FREE 57-page investment banking recruiting guide - plus, get weekly updates so that you can break into investment banking. Thanks for visiting!Corporate finance jobs at normal companies are bad……if you’re using them to break into a deal-based field, such as investment banking, private equity, or venture capital, or as a “Plan B” if you interview around but do not get into one of these.
Investment Banker Salary and Bonus Report: 2023 Update

Oct 23, 2024 | mergersandinquisitions.com | Brian DeChesare

If you're new here, please click here to get my FREE 57-page investment banking recruiting guide - plus, get weekly updates so that you can break into investment banking. Thanks for visiting!You could say that investment banker salaries and bonuses have been “disappointing” for the past few years. The issue isn’t so much that they’re bad by historical standards, but that they rose sharply due to inflated deal activity in 2020 – 2021 and then fell just as sharply.