Positions in securitized debt.

[L1Junkie]

Looking for a little info if anybody has any.

My Background: I just finished a Ph.D. in philosophy (relatively technical: philosophy of science stuff), have an undergrad in mathematics and just took level I in June...crossing fingers. I used to work as an actuary in pension valuation before grad school...athough for just a couple years.

In any case, I'm hoping to make a move into structured finance and in particular am finding myself very interested in commercial real estate securities.

Couple questions.

1) Anybody familiar with the structured finance groups at the big banks? What are the different roles? I know there are a ton of people with different backgrounds, from law to accounting to comp sci for all the different stages of the process; origination -> sales.

2) I'm interested in being involved on the backend of the process...in the structuring and the bond pricing, etc. Are these positions reserved for people with tech-heavy skill sets? I was a "pure" math major and have been studying philosophy for several years, so I don't have superior programming skills, etc. I don't really want to be sitting in the back doing code anyway. I see myself as someone with strong quantitative skills that can write 10 pages of prose in an hour, and am hoping to be more involved in analyzing, understanding and selling the finished products.

Anyway, thoughts appreciated.

 

[JoeyDVivre]

You need to be a little more flexible than structured commercial real estate products.

First, you don't know anything about the range of things you could be doing. What's so interesting about CMBS anyway that as your first job in finance you need to be running off to a niche (albeit a growing niche) market? Is it that you don't understand fixed rates so you need CMBS floating rates or something? Is there something especially interesting about packaging up mortgages from strip malls?

Second, your quant skills are probably okay, but on Wall St. quants aren't people with undergraduate degrees in math who can't program. I don't think there is huge demand anywhere I've seen for 10 pages of prose an hour (except in academia where that is a valuable skill).

The world of finance has lots of opportunities but you are going to have to find someone who will hire someone with a degree that is peculiar and not in any demand in finance. Why the heck would you want to get that degree and then go work in finance? Aren't there academic jobs you can get?

Your best bet is to look good in a suit and do something like hedge fund marketing or private wealth management. Your degree matters there. Otherwise, I would say just start looking for jobs on Bloomberg and with various recruiters. Don't restrict yourself to CMBS jobs or even structured finance. Learn to program. If anyone tells me they're a quant but can't program, I'm skeptical. Added to the pie-in-the-sky philosophy of science degree, I think that would suggest that you are someone who worries deeply about the axiom of choice and that won't help me at all.

 

[L1Junkie]

Thanks for the reply.

Anyway...I actually came to decide on this area because people I talked to said I should be more specific about what I wanted to do.

I started out about a year ago looking into "securities research" and was doing informational interviews and uniformly heard "get more specific, then I can help you."

So, not really interested in being a Quant, and I know that my degree isn't relevant to finance. It's not why I got it. I'm not going into academia for a number of reasons. But that is another story.

Basically, I think that securitized debt seems really cool. The variables that go into them, what affects cash flows and pricing all seems very interesting to me, but I'm still not sure if it's what I should be focusing on because a) as you point out I'm not a Quant or have a finance degree and b) who the hell knows what I'll like before I do it?

But, to get to the crux of it. I have some contacts at a few BBs in NYC that I have spoken to a few times...and now that I'm finished with my degree I want to move towards the "Can you get me an interview for a job?" stage and don't want to waste their time with questions I might get answers to from less senior people.

Be interested to hear anything you know about roles in structured finance (though it seems like you think it's a boring area?)

 

[JoeyDVivre]

No I don't think structured finance is a boring topic - I think structured finance will change the world and already has. I even think CMBS is pretty interesting.

Let's talk about this offline at joeydvivre at yahoo dot com