Sales and trading

Sales and trading is one of the primary front-office divisions of major investment banks. The term is typically reserved for the trading activities done by sell-side investment banks who are primarily engaged in making markets for institutional clients in various forms of securities.^[1] The trading floor of these banks will contain dedicated desks who generally focus exclusively on trading one form of security. These desks will more generally fall within the categories of fixed income, currencies, commodities, or equities.^[2]

In market making, traders will buy and sell financial products primarily to facilitate the investment and trading activities of its clients with the goal of making an incremental amount of money on each trade.

Sales

The Sales component refers to the investment bank's sales force within the sales and trading division. Generally, sales members will be placed on dedicated desks just as traders are and will have a dedicated list of clients that they are responsible for managing. The sales role is the client-facing role of the S&T division of a bank, which thus necessitates sales members interacting directly with institutional clients in order to assess their needs, provide general market commentary, and work with other members of the desk such as traders or structurers in order to price and execute their desired trades.^[3]

The sales and trading function will also typically employ financial analysts that provide trading strategy advice to external as well as internal clients to support sales and trading. This strategy often affects the way the firm will operate in the market, the direction it would like to take in terms of its proprietary and flow positions, the suggestions salespersons give to clients, as well as the way structurers create new products.

Trading

Banks also undertake risk through proprietary trading (though this is subject to regulation within the US and certain European markets), done by a special set of traders who do not interface with clients and through "principal risk", risk undertaken by a trader after he buys or sells a product to a client and does not hedge his total exposure. Banks seek to maximize profitability for a given amount of risk on their balance sheet. The necessity for numerical ability in sales and trading has created jobs for physics, math and engineering Ph.D.s who act as quantitative analysts.

References

^ "What is Sales and Trading?". Sales and Trading.
^ "What are The Sales and Trading Desks?". Sales and Trading.
^ "The Sales Side of S&T". SalesAndTrading.org.

The Investment banking handbook: Chapter 11 - Sales & Trading. John Wiley and Sons, 1988

Corporate finance and investment banking

Capital structure

Convertible debt
Exchangeable debt
Mezzanine debt
Pari passu
Preferred equity
Second lien debt
Senior debt
Senior secured debt
Shareholder loan
Stock
Subordinated debt
Warrant

Transactions
(terms/conditions)

Equity offerings	At-the-market offering Book building Bookrunner Bought deal Bought out deal Corporate spin-off Direct public offering Equity carve-out Follow-on offering Greenshoe Reverse Initial public offering Pre-IPO Private placement Public offering Rights issue Seasoned equity offering Secondary market offering Underwriting
Mergers and acquisitions	Buy side Contingent value rights Control premium Demerger Divestment Drag-along right Management due diligence Managerial entrenchment Mandatory offer Minority discount Pitch book Pre-emption right Proxy fight Post-merger integration Sell side Shareholder rights plan Special-purpose entity Special situation Squeeze-out Staggered board of directors Stock swap Super-majority amendment Synergy Tag-along right Takeover Reverse Tender offer
Leverage	Debt restructuring Debtor-in-possession financing Dividend recapitalization Financial sponsor Leveraged buyout Leveraged recapitalization High-yield debt Private equity Project finance